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Final Fantasy VII

The Voices

If you’ve heard Joshua Rosfield, the younger brother of Final Fantasy XVI protagonist Clive Rosfield, in trailers and gameplay, there’s a good chance you find that voice very familiar. That’s because it’s Logan Hannan,

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVFT.ZxgWdXtX9G9rxEwDCN2HLy&pid=News

Final Fantasy 16: Finding The Voices Of Clive And Joshua Rosfield

https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF.EI0KEAzomKcyyyXhY0pVHg&pid=news

GameInformer

Valley County

Channel 4 News

The Valley Voices Woman’s Choir, under the direction of Victoria Hammel, would like to invite you to a public performance on Sunday, June 4th at the Valley City Congregational Church. The time

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Valley Voices Woman’s Choir Performance June 4

https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF.wPyOE4JBdAYvNQZGYwHnuQ&pid=news

NewsDakota

Alexa’s ability to speak in Samuel L. Jackson’s voice is already gone, and the Melissa McCarthy and Shaquille O’Neal voices are getting the hook soon.

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVFT.8P-rM_5h32Dy49PoltnUpS&pid=News

Alexa Internet

Amazon.com

Amazon yanks Alexa’s paid celebrity voices, offers refunds

https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF.u0dGzAOYYcERNCJLWpts9g&pid=news

TechHive

Drama

Valley

The Friends of Hardman Farm State Historic site, in partnership with Piedmont University’s North Georgia Theatre, will present “Valley Voices,” an outdoor drama June 1-3 and 8-10, 2023, at Hardman Farm,

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVFT.sYtKKElOTbd-x7jJSmSNWS&pid=News

Valley Voices Outdoor Drama Begins This Weekend

WRWH

Most film and photography on Tibet is from "The West" or "Western Eye" looking in. This film 'Voices in Exile' by Tibetan and first time director Tenzin Wangden Andrugtsang, presents the Tibetan Exile Community from the rarely seen Tibetan point of view.

Voices in Exile

https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF.U1QI751ZBW09n48VGZ_I_Q&pid=news

AV Club

CSRWire USA

NBCUniversal

Babylon 5: Voices

Comcast NBCUniversal’s Voices of the Civil Rights Movement platform won both The Webby Award and The Webby People’s Voice Award for Video in the Public Service & Activism category at the 27th Annual Webby Awards.

Comcast NBCUniversal’s ‘Voices of the Civil Rights Movement’ Platform Wins Two Webby Awards

https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF.hEqYQrIu_oVxEcF1aiBtsQ&pid=news

CSR Wire

Hearing

Judge

Enbridge Line 5

MADISON - A federal judge expressed frustration with a move in his court asking him to shut down an oil pipeline that a Wisconsin Native American tribe says is at risk of rupturing on reservation ...

'It's an extraordinary request': Judge voices hesitance on bid to close Enbridge Line 5 fuel pipeline

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Tennessee

Erin

The Tennessee Voices podcast brings readers conversations with authors of insightful and compelling guest columns.

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVFT.zC3vVGhwB3nD_PETI-H_gC&pid=News

Tennessee Voices, Episode 353: Erin Vilardi, founder and CEO, Vote Run Lead,

https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF._NZQWGZgbEfneJaryWQHrQ&pid=news

The Tennessean (Nashville) on MSN.com

Business Wire

“We’re committed to the efforts of Levanta Tu Voz and we will dedicate our resources and platforms to make Levanta Tu Voz a powerful clearinghouse of Latino business voices,” said Julian ...

New Program Elevates Latino Voices in Energy Conversation

newsroom.businesswire.com

Get the most recent info and news about Voices.com on HackerNoon, where 10k+ technologists publish stories for 4M+ monthly readers.

Voices is the world’s #1 Voice Marketplace. We’ve helped tens of thousands of marketers, producers, instructors, and creative directors at the world’s biggest and most beloved brands find the right talent for their creative projects. Headquartered in London, Canada, Voices matches clients with voice over, music, audio production, and translation professionals in over 160 countries.

Voices.com

Why Block.One which raised $4 Billion in ICO is now in a problem Block.one held an initial coin offering (ICO) of EOS tokens (EOS) in 2018, releasing 900 million tokens for approximately $4 billion, making it the largest ICO. Unfortunately, many people have been disillusioned with the company’s trajectory since then. Yves La Rose, the EOS Network Foundation’s (ENF) founder, disclosed that they are gearing up for legal action against EOS founders Block.one in a major milestone of the EOS ecosystem against creator’s tale. Concerns were made about whether ENF will carry out its warning, if they even have a case, or if ENF has a morally relevant authority to do so. However, if and when they do, would that be the best solution, considering B1’s experience with corporate lawsuits and the fact that it has perhaps one of the strongest defense attorneys in the industry? The EOS Network Foundation reported in a blog that several individuals of the EOS community are unhappy with Block.one. “Block.one has not kept its word regarding past promises and that both the community and individual EOS users have been harmed as a result.” The Foundation had previously publicized that it has been in talks with Block.one to identify a mutual understanding. Each party was involved in conversations in an effort to obtain a fair resolution. Block.one, on the other hand, has decided to walk away from the talks, according to ENF. Consequently, the EOS block producers determined that tenure for future EOS token revenues for Block.one should be frozen. La Rose called EOS a failed experiment a few months back. He stated it’s a bad monetary investment, highlighting the market cap and price reduction. He also claimed that the community had lost important developers and had switched its major focus area largely from blockchain innovation to asset management. The token sale was successful due to a barrage of marketing, enthusiasm, and velocity that pushed the price of EOS higher. Unfortunately, marketing and advertising began to decline soon after. B1 shifted its focus to forming a private firm and broadening its geographic reach. They claimed that a robust B1 would contribute to an enhanced EOS, but this never happened. Instead, the exact reverse has happened—unfulfilled promises, including the extravagant debut of Voice.com, followed by further unkept promises. Touted as a game-changing social networking service that would be developed on the EOS blockchain and reward EOS token holders, it was instead created on a private blockchain. La Rose commented: “We have been disappointed with Block.one’s reaction to our attempts to negotiate a solution following its failure to fulfill its commitments. As a result, we are exploring all possibilities to reach a resolution of this outstanding issue by other means.” People became interested in EOS because of B1’s claims to create the community and setting needed for the ecosystem to thrive. It’s safe to argue that EOS would have been in a stronger place today if they had accomplished so. It’s a viewpoint shared by a large number of people within the community. Negative thoughts about EOS significantly influence sentiment today, as evidenced by media and the internet. The ENF claims that individuals who already have put so much money and effort into EOS have been significantly damaged due to B1’s failure to implement. The manner in which B1 interacted with the EOS community has so far not helped matters. When discussing negotiations with the ENF and Brock Pierce, they have repeatedly and deliberately missed the chance to establish a fair and reasonable arrangement. They never interacted with the community, hardly attended to it, and turned down each request for a remark or an engagement. This carelessness sparked outrage in the community, prompting Block Producers to terminate B1’s EOS token vesting timeline. Ever since, the EOS community commenced on mapping its path ahead with a slew of new policies, financing, and rebrands, along with the takeover of EOSIO creation and implementation, new venture capitalists, providing funds for a myriad of task forces, acknowledgment grants, and newfound motivation. Gradually, all of the promises made by B1 are now being fulfilled as the EOS community regains command of its destiny. Catch all the breaking news, and Don’t forget to like the story! . Image credits: Dan Freeman Disclaimer: The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence, asking the right questions, and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions. The writer holds Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Solana and Cosmos. The writer has a vested interest in the story.

The Curious Case of Block.One, The Company Behind the $4 Billion ICO 

$SHIB: My Journey Through the Deepest Recesses & High Command of a $10 Billion Decentralized Army

From February to April 2020, everybody talked about the , a measure of bitcoin’s price across two timeframes displayed as lines on a chart. When the lines cross, bitcoin hits its peak and goes into a bear market. Pi Cycle Those lines crossed two weeks ago, just before bitcoin hit its all-time high of $65,000. And everybody said, “meh, it has to be wrong.” Denial? Is bitcoin on the wrong side of the slope? A Pi Cycle cross is supposed to be the signal for the market cycle peak. That signal flashed. Everybody dismissed it. What does that tell you about indicators? People will believe whatever they want, regardless of what the indicators say. I don’t make decisions based on the Pi Cycle but I like it because it serves as a nice, clean, easy-to-use catch-all for the various metrics that compare short-term price movements with long-term price movements. You can dig through a bunch of indicators or get the same info from the Pi Cycle quickly in one glance. Much easier to use the Pi Cycle. Dismiss it at your peril. When short-term movements go way more extreme than the general overall long-term trend, you need to pay attention. On the way up, you can notch that as one piece of data to suggest the market should fall (even though it might not). On the way down, you can use that as one more reason the market should rise (even though it might not). Just wait until bitcoin’s price drops to a seemingly impossible $26,000 and altcoins get slaughtered. Then everybody will look back and say “the Pi Cycle was right!” But will that be true? It’s right until it’s wrong Did you know there are at least seven Pi Cycle indicators? And they all cross at different times? In this video, a mathematician found seven other combinations of short- and long-term price movements that catch the market cycle peaks from very different directions. Maybe we’re looking at the wrong Pi Cycle? Or perhaps the Pi Cycle is not as much of a concern as everybody thinks? When this Pi Cycle crossed, we saw none of the other “peak” signals. Of all the data models people use to identify market cycle peaks, only the Pi Cycle triggered. (Technically, only one of the various permutations of the Pi Cycle triggered.) In other words, we didn’t come close to a “peak” signal on MVRV, Reserve Risk, 2-year Moving Average Multiplier, Puell Multiple, Logarithmic Growth Curves, Stock to Flow, S2Fx, Golden Ratio, rHODL, Net Unrealized Profit/Loss, or countless other metrics of previous market cycle peaks. Sometimes, the market just gets ahead of itself. Bitcoin’s price can drop 50% or more in the middle of larger uptrends. We’ve seen that happen more often than we’ve seen a Pi Cycle cross! Altcoins can fall even further — sometimes even in the middle of a raging altseason, as we’ve seen in recent months. The difference is, they recover fairly quickly during the zooms of altseason. During the lulls, they can take weeks or months to get back to even. Complacency Kills While it’s safe to say $65,000 is not the peak of the market, that doesn’t mean we can’t drop before we resume our path to that peak. a lot This is a volatile market full of massive risks and massive rewards. When the upswings bring 10x gains and the downswings bring 80% losses, buying and selling at the wrong time can hurt you. That’s the nature of investing — you will never get the timing just right. You can, however, position yourself to benefit from shifts in momentum and sentiment. Your true enemy is complacency. Bad decisions hurt, but complacency kills. On the Wall Street cheat sheet, complacency comes right after a market cycle peak. Of all the data models we have for bitcoin’s bull and bear market triggers, Pi Cycle is the only one that triggered “bear market.” While it’s hard to believe the only metric that triggered is the only metric that’s right, perhaps it’s worth taking a moment to ask: what if Pi Cycle really the true measure? is At the very least, that might force us to consider all possibilities, not just the ones that you to be true. want Mark Helfman publishes the newsletter. He is also the author of three books and a top bitcoin writer on and . Learn more about him in his . Crypto is Easy Medium Hacker Noon bio Originally published on Voice.com .

Pi Cycle Says Bitcoin’s Bull Market Just Ended (and Nobody Cares)

In a recent article, , I projected market expectations for bitcoin’s price into the future and compared the results to historical indicators of market cycle peaks. The End of The Bitcoin Bull Market As We Know It Guess what? If those expectations come true, bitcoin's bull market will peak this month at approximately $90,000, give or take $10-15k. Yes, that means the market cycle peak will come this month and possibly not break $100,000. (Early May works, too.) That may sound like poppycock because bitcoin recently broke out of a bullish trading pattern in the middle of a parabolic run after completing its record-tying sixth straight month of higher prices. The last two times it did that, its price doubled over less than a month. Altcoins have started to run hard and everybody says institutional money's pouring into the market. While the price has gone sideways for the last month or so, the experts say that's a healthy consolidation before the next leg up. That's my point. Everything's moving too hard, too fast, and if that continues, we will soon see all the signals of a market cycle peak. I lay out the argument in the article linked above. Mark, you’re nuts. Stock-to-Flow says there’s no way that can happen Yes, Stock-to-Flow predicts bitcoin’s price will reach $82,000 in June and stay above $100,000 from July to eternity. Look at this chart, courtesy of : LookIntoBitcoin Do you see the squiggly line at the bottom? That shows you how much bitcoin’s price has strayed from Stock-to-Flow’s predictions over time. When the squiggly line hits the flat black line, that means bitcoin's price is aligned with Stock-to-Flow. As the squiggly line moves away from the flat black line, that means bitcoin’s price is deviating from Stock-to-Flow. You can see it more clearly on this chart from : Glassnode Bitcoin’s price has gone 4x higher and 70% lower than Stock-to-Flow for weeks at a time, and sometimes spends at prices +50% below and +2x higher than the model predicts. months The new version of Stock-to-Flow, , offers a similarly wide range of prices that fit the model. S2Fx We’ve done it before There’s no reason bitcoin's price can’t zoom to $90,000, hit a market cycle peak, crash to $30,000, then go up to $100,000 later this year. Maybe instead of a bull market that looks like 2016–2017, we get a bull market that’s more like 2013: a market cycle peak in April to cap off a long bull run, followed by a massive crash, then a few months of Silicon Valley FOMO that sent prices even higher. Both Stock-to-Flow and its updated version, S2Fx, say we can do that. There’s also no reason bitcoin's price can’t chill around $40–60k for a few months — or even crash down to the $20,000s from here. We’ve seen bitcoin make those types of moves in the middle of raging bull markets, all within the range of prices you get with Stock-to-Flow and S2Fx. While that would take a lot of people by surprise, bitcoin's price has dropped 50% or more in each of the past three years and all of those drops fit into Stock-to-Flow, too. Unless Stock-to-Flow is not very good at predicting bitcoin’s price . . . Mark Helfman publishes the newsletter. He is also the author of three books and a top bitcoin writer on and . Learn more about him in his . Crypto is Easy Medium Hacker Noon bio . Originally published on Voice.com

Bitcoin’s Price Peak Is Coming This Month - Stock-to-Flow Says . . .

I wrote three books about bitcoin and publish a newsletter about cryptocurrency. I'd love for bitcoin's price to reach the lofty expectations everybody else seems to have. When you look at the data, trends, and patterns of behavior we saw as bitcoin’s price approached its four previous market cycle peaks, you will see the same things today as you did for each of those other times. Sure, it's cooled off for the past two weeks, but the trajectory hasn't changed. Still parabolic and coming out of a bull flag. The last time bitcoin did this (February), its price doubled. The time before that (December), its price tripled. If bitcoin comes even close to those targets in April, its bull run will end. I realize that seems crazy. On March 11, 2021, I published going deep into the data and correlations. I summarize them below and recommend you read that other post for a more nuanced and informative explanation. This article hits only the high notes. a detailed post for subscribers of my Crypto is Easy newsletter Also, make sure you caught my post from last month, . Bitcoin’s Market Cycle Peak is a Lot Closer Than You Think Mark, don’t even bother. Institutions will never let that happen! Yes, some say institutions will never let the price crash. No more bear markets. Only up forever. They’re all FOMOing in, buying up even the slightest dip. “Wall of institutional money.” Sounds great. To sustain this bull market, we need institutions to HODL, not just buy. After all, they can’t push prices higher when they’re selling their bitcoin right after they get it. Look at the realized cap HODL waves, which show the movements of bitcoin among older and newer wallets based on the value of the bitcoins that move. Unlike the HODL waves you’re probably used to, this metric quantifies the influence those HODLers have on the market. Rather than calculate a percentage of people or wallets, it calculates the percentage of bitcoin’s market value. We know institutions accumulated a lot of bitcoin from September to December. If they’re still HODLing that bitcoin, we should see it reflected in some growth in the band that represents people who acquired bitcoin in the past 3–6 months. As of mid-March 2021, we didn’t see that at all. In fact, we saw a steep dating back months. drop This chart lumps all the short-term HODLers, people who’ve had bitcoin for three months or less. Blue circles are market cycle peaks. Those shorter-term bands keep widening, resulting in spikes on this chart. You can see the spikes lead to market cycle peaks. As you can tell from the arrow, this most recent spike is approaching (but not quite at) levels we only see at market cycle peaks. As I explained in previous updates, it’s unlikely institutions or their custodians are moving money from old wallets to new ones within their own portfolios, at least not in any significant amount. In other words, those short-term bands are not rising from big HODLers moving to newer wallets that they control. Rather, they’re shipping off their bitcoin to somebody else. Certainly, institutions are HODLing. It’s just not enough to change the trend. some Yea, but money’s pouring into Grayscale and the ETFs! It was until February. Since then, have fallen off a cliff and even went negative in March. flows into Grayscale bitcoin trust Flows into the Purpose bitcoin ETF have dried up, too — from to an average of 200 or less since then. On top of that, 3iQ sold some bitcoin from its fund. 2,200 bitcoins on the first day That signals fatigue or disinterest among institutional investors and traditional retail speculators, at least in the very short-term. (Yes, NYDIG says it has a few billion dollars of institutional money lined up. For a $1 trillion asset like bitcoin, a billion dollars doesn’t seem like enough to move the market.) Ok, that doesn’t matter, that data models predict higher prices for longer Sure, depending on which model you pick. S2F, expanding cycles, hash cycles, four-year cycles, halving cycles, the list goes on. There’s a model for every outcome you want to see, and they all disagree with each other. While I don’t make decisions based on data models, I found a few that fit my bias. They all tell us the market’s approaching its peak. , a mathematical formula that maps the intersection of two specific moving averages. When those averages converge, the market is near its peak. Today, those averages are 5% apart and getting closer with each passing day. All four previous times we saw that pattern, the market peaked within weeks. Pi cycle , a line bitcoin breaches only when it reaches market cycle peaks. We’re very close to breaching that line. Two-year moving average multiplier , an algorithm that marks the big peaks. When bitcoin’s price hits the top of the curve, it signals the absolute peak and triggers deep, long bear markets. If bitcoin’s price remains on this trajectory, we will hit the top of that curve in a month. Logarithmic growth curve . Whenever bitcoin’s price goes above that line, it hits a market cycle peak. That line projects to hit the top of the logarithmic growth curve at the same time as you would expect the lines of the Pi cycle to converge. Golden ratio multiplier All of these signals meet next month at a price of roughly $90,000. For this summary, I’ll overlap all of them on one chart so you can see the trajectory: In my longer update, I delve into this data more deeply. Really interesting stuff. Bottom line? Every time we see those signals converge, we get a crash of +77% and a bear market. Coincidences! Anybody can pick whatever data they want Yes. Anything you can do, I can do better 😉 I don’t offer predictions or statistical proof, just food for thought. The more coincidences you see, the more likely it is that they mean something. We’re long overdue for a severe crash (not a dip) or at least a long consolidation, and maybe we will get that before the market cycle peak. If so, you can throw out all this data. Bitcoin will crash, the market will reset and lay a strong foundation for that big, long bull market that everybody expects. Without that crash or multi-month consolidation, we will head to the market cycle peak a lot sooner at a much lower price than you expect. But the bull market just started Are you sure? Bitcoin’s price has gone up for more than two years. In January 2019, it was $3,200. In January 2020, it was $7,000. In January 2021, it was $25,000. On those dates, the total altcoin market was $37 billion, $53 billion, and $215 billion. Higher each year. We’ve been in this bull market for a while, even if it hasn’t felt like one or it hasn’t met the dictionary definition of “bull market.” Now, the momentum has shifted. This plane’s running out of fuel. It’s ok to refuel Do you want to hop on a plane when it’s already running out of fuel? Or do you want to wait until it lands so you can fill up the tank and then start zooming again? Bitcoin’s price can go a lot higher, but it needs to land and refuel. Otherwise, it will crash. Not a 30% crash like we’ve seen so many times. Not even a 50% crash like we got in 2020 and 2019. A far bigger crash. We still have room to run. You can realistically double your portfolio in a month or two, and if you have a lot of altcoins, you could do even better. That’s an opportunity you can’t get in any other market. At great risk, though. HODLers don’t care Long-term, none of this matters. Bitcoin’s price will almost certainly go way higher in the future than it is today. If you’re willing to HODL the peak and wait six months to three years for your investment to get back to even, then you don’t have to worry about a thing. No matter what happens in the coming months, you’ll be fine in the long run. For me, that’s a big risk to take and a long time to wait. I don’t want to be underwater for that long. You probably don’t, either. It’s different this time No. If we keep this pace, we will soon reach the same place we’ve been four times before, with each market cycle. Four times. Same patterns, Same relationships. Same things we see at the end of each market cycle. It’s not different. It’s not different at all. It’s exactly the same. Why should we expect a different outcome? Mark Helfman publishes the newsletter. He is also the author of three books and a top bitcoin writer on and . Learn more about him in his . Crypto is Easy Medium Hacker Noon bio Originally published at . Voice.com

The End of The Bitcoin Bull Market As We Know It

In my newsletter, , I look at big trends, not the day-to-day movements of prices. Crypto is Easy There’s never a bad time to buy bitcoin, but some times are better than others. It’s more about knowing the risks and opportunities and making a decision that feels good to you. What’s your timeframe? Tolerance for risk? Mindset? What do you want to get out of the market? Even though bitcoin's price has cooled off for the past two weeks, it remains on course to reach $100,000 by May 2021. Will it continue that course? We’ll see. It’s realistic to expect bitcoin's price will go up for another month or two, hit its market cycle peak, then drop significantly. Like, 60-80% or more. It’s also realistic to expect a pretty major crash now, or at least a few months of consolidation while the market settles down. It’s not realistic to expect the price to keep going up at this pace through the end of the year, even though everybody seems to think it will. Strength is fleeing the market Everybody's talking super-cycle and last chance and this thing will never crash and institutions buy every dip. We don't have any evidence of that. From previous updates, we know 2021’s ascent is being driven by retail investors—people like you and me. Grayscale net flows have dwindled for weeks. aSOPR, a measure of market sentiment, remains above its 1 baseline, suggesting people do not care about their bitcoins very much and will more readily trade them for something else. Realized cap HODL waves show the same movements we see as bitcoin approaches a market cycle peak, with long-term HODLers abandoning their bitcoins to short-term HODLers and those short-term HODLers shuffling their new bitcoins to even more-recent buyers. You can see this in the chart below, which lumps short-term HODlers into colored bands. The shortest-term HODLers, 24 hours or less, are at the bottom and 1-3 month HODLers are at the top. The peaks are circled. These HODL bands spiked up a lot in 2021, approaching mid-70% and getting closer to previous market cycle peaks. These short-term HODL bands keep growing. If institutions are really HODLing, we should see these bands level out or drop as institutional bitcoins go to older HODL bands at the top of the chart, not newer ones at the bottom. But we don’t see that. Instead, we see bitcoins continuing to flow to newer wallets. As I've shown in previous updates, it’s unlikely those moves correspond to institutions or their custodians moving bitcoins around within the same portfolio, e.g., from large wallets to small wallets, old wallets to new ones. At least, if they're doing that, they're not doing much of it. Maybe institutions and corporations simply don't hold enough bitcoin to change the trajectory of the market? We shall see. Meanwhile, I’m not buying or selling. Just sticking to my plan. My Plan for Bitcoin's Bull Market As soon as my plan signals to buy or sell, I will let you know. Watch my most recent updates for more about the data and trends. Long Bitcoin But Beware The Super-Cycle Update for February 25, 2021 Update for February 18, 2021 My plan is not a trader’s plan. It’s focused on making the most of this bull market, buying when the price is not likely to go much lower for much longer and very likely to go up forever. Altseaz'n? Altcoins have kept pace with bitcoin as both fell. Look at the highlighted circle in this chart of bitcoin dominance, you can see the altcoins’ proportion of the market held as bitcoin’s price rose and fell during mid-January and February. This is not a price chart, it simply measures the percentage of the total crypto market cap that’s captured as bitcoin. In the past, when alts hold their portion while bitcoin fell or went sideways, the entire altcoin space went as soon as bitcoin’s price turned around. nutz We just need to see whether bitcoin’s price turns around. Does this mean altseason's over? No. In fact, bitcoin's lull has altcoins from zooming. No matter how strong the trends and tailwinds, we can't have altseason unless bitcoin goes up. Bitcoin always leads, altcoins always follow. kept Suffice to say, altcoins have bitcoin on the way up and kept pace with it on the way down. Assuming that trend continues, you can expect a massive boom for altcoins as soon as bitcoin turns around. outpaced Down, then up? A nosedive would be great. That would give the market a chance to reset, laying a strong foundation for even bigger growth. That can’t happen if bitcoin continues its current pace. If bitcoin continues to double/triple in price, then drop 25% before going up again, it will reach $90,000 by May 2021. If that happens, we will see the most accurate top indicators, Puell Multiple and MVRV Z-Score, signal “sell” and the entire market will hit its cycle peak soon after (likely higher than $90,000). After that, bitcoin will have a huge crash. Yes, the data models predict a different outcome on a different timeframe. Stock-to-flow, hash cycles, halving cycles, four-year cycles, expanding cycles, etc. Those models all contradict each other. As my friend says, there are no good models but some are useful. For those who prefer data models instead of my on-chain analysis, look at the logarithmic growth curve model. That model fits this scenario. I prefer analytics that reflect what people do with bitcoin, not projections into the future. As a result, I'm don't make any decisions on data models. It's just nice to know one of the models fits my analysis. Never below $40,000 again? It’s hard to feel good about the market when we see the momentum turning against us. Crypto prices can still go way, way higher long after strength departs. It takes a while for reality to catch up to the market. My gut, personal feeling, looking at the data and reflecting on my own experience when I entered this market in November 2017? It's just uncanny some of the similarities. Same chatter, same sentiment among OGs, same on-chain metrics, same comments on Twitter and YouTube. People who refused to buy at $5,000 piling in at $50,000. Shills, pump-and-dumps, "I don't know what this does but I bought it," and the same patterns in on-chain movements of bitcoins. Eerily similar. In November 2017, crypto was just on the precipice of that explosion you probably remember. Prices had already gone up a lot but it wasn't (yet) all over the mainstream news, just an article here or there or maybe a segment on the occasional newscast. From an investment perspective, that was a terrible time to enter the market. In hindsight, I would never have entered if I knew then what I know now. Do you really want to hop on the plane when it's already running out of fuel and the forecast calls for storms? Or would you rather wait until it lands and hop on after it has a full tank and clear skies ahead? Price lags momentum You can't deny the opportunity is here, now, as it was in November 2017. Without a deep crash or long, sideways consolidation, this market is heading to a big, blow-off top sooner and at a lower price than most people expect. Only a nice, healthy crash or extended sideways move can stop that from happening. Here’s the thing: Price usually lags momentum. We can see momentum in the data I look at. That momentum is fading. When bitcoin’s price drops, strength builds. Eventually, it builds and builds until the market explodes. As the price goes parabolic, weakness builds. Eventually, the bottom falls out. Rinse and repeat. Those are your market cycles. Yes, we could see bitcoin's price double or triple in the coming weeks. Altcoins will do multiples better. That's realistic. Just be careful out there. We’ve gone up very quickly. What goes up must come down. Not usually or sometimes, but always. a lot Always. The only question is how high do we go before we fall, or did we already start the drop? Time will tell. Relax and enjoy the ride! Mark Helfman publishes the newsletter. He is also the author of three books and a top bitcoin writer on and . Learn more about him in his . Crypto is Easy Medium Hacker Noon bio Also published on Voice.com .

Bitcoin's Market Cycle Peak is a Lot Closer Than You Think

In 2017, I bought XRP at $.20 and watched it go to $3 in one month. One month. One. Month. 1,500% in ONE month. I sold half at $3, the rest at $2.50, and thought I was a genius. Only much later did I realize the real geniuses bought it at $.005 and sat on 4,000% gains . before catching another 1,500% on top of that And you think LINK is expensive at $30 and $13 billion market cap? Do you know what XRP’s market cap was when I bought it? $11 billion. That was in November 2017, when the overall crypto market and capital flows were much smaller. Now, the market is much bigger and money is far more abundant. Do you still think we can’t see a $300 LINK token? It’s altseason. It can definitely happen. Altseason: A Brief and Beautiful Thing At some point, the entire market crash. It’s inevitable. will Not a routine 30 – 40% drop, but a big one, probably 60 – 70% or more, with some altcoins going even lower. Until then, altcoins will zoom. ZOOM. As a result, you now have opportunities to make fast money. massive If you’re good and lucky, you can realistically pull off 300% swing trades at will, and possibly do even better. Even just HODLing what you already have, 300% is realistic. Those gains are typical of every altseason. If anything, that’s a low expectation. Many altcoins have gone up 300% this year. already Get it While You Can! Unless we get a very big drop in bitcoin’s price a long sideways move, we will reach our market cycle peak soon. or At that point, the market will force you to sell to protect your investments from greedy people who will crash the market. Once you see the signs of the market cycle peak, you will get out before the party ends. You don’t have much time. Either we get a very nice, healthy drop soon, or we get a massive parabolic rocket ship blast-off to the market cycle peak. Now or in a Few Months If you only want to make fast money in crypto, you need to act urgently. That’s not my thing — I’m a tortoise, not a hare — but I wouldn’t assume this mania will last for the rest of 2021. In fact, we have a lot of evidence to suggest it won’t last much longer. After the crash, once the hype dies down and everybody has a chance to suss out the winners and losers, you will have opportunities to make slow, easy money. If you’re patient and savvy, you can realistically pull off 3,000% gains. Possibly, even better. massive But you will have to wait for it. I’m Sitting on My Hands As for me, I’m not doing anything. The best opportunities come when the market is boring and scary, not when everything’s hyped and prices are zooming. Does that mean I’m missing out on juicy gains? Am I lame for not getting into the latest DeFi coin? Probably. Actually, I’m almost certain I’m missing some short-term money-making opportunities. My goal is to make the most of this bull market. I did that. I spent three years building a portfolio. I already found some moonshots. I feel fortunate that I’m in a position to chill and let the market do its thing. I don’t need to add more risk and spend more time and money chasing altcoins. If you subscribed to for long enough, you did, too. Some of my specific altcoin recommendations have already delivered 1,000% gains. Most are up 500% or more. Crypto is Easy We got in early. No reason to play catch-up or ape into the latest governance token. Enjoy this moment. In a few months or less, everything will change, as it did in the fall of 2020, winter of 2019, all through 2018, and twice during 2017. Nothing lasts forever. Make sure you’re ready for when it ends. That’s when the opportunities come. real Mark Helfman publishes the newsletter. He is also the author of three books and a top bitcoin writer on and . Learn more about him in his . Crypto is Easy Medium Hacker Noon bio Originally published on Voice.com .

Making the Most of Altseason in a Bull Market

Have you seen bitcoin's price lately? It's over $45,000. The total cryptocurrency market cap just crossed $1.4 trillion. Everybody's talking about a $100,000 bitcoin, or even a $288,000 bitcoin . this year People who said crypto was a scam at a $500 billion market cap are for the market cap to drop down to $500 billion. begging People who said “never bitcoin” when its price was $14,000 in 2019 now ask whether they should use their next stimulus check to buy some at a price that's 3x higher than it was back then. People who said they couldn’t afford bitcoin at $4,000 told me they’ll buy the next dip. You didn’t miss your chance If you didn’t “stack sats” from January 2019 to December 2020, you may think you missed the bitcoin boat. It’s ok! That boat will come back to harbor—maybe sooner than you think! In a few years, you’ll laugh at the idea that anybody worried about bitcoin at $45. Its price could drop 60% immediately and remain in a healthy, long-term uptrend. That doesn’t mean you should buy now. Today, you’re getting a $45,000 bitcoin in the middle of a parabolic uptrend. Looking at on-chain metrics like aSOPR, percent supply in profits, MVRV, HODL waves, and almost every other long-term indicator, you see the same data you see whenever we head to market cycle peaks (and the inevitable crash that follows). We’ve already had two +50% crashes since this bull market started in January 2019. Why not wait for a third one? You may worry that bitcoin’s price will turn around and shoot up to $80,000 or higher. That's realistic, but keep in mind—nothing fundamentally changes when bitcoin’s price goes up and down. It’s no more valuable at $100,000 than $10,000. A boom from $9,800 to $45,000 did not make bitcoin any more or less risky. Focus on opportunity, not price Why worry about price? If you bought bitcoin at $100 and sold it at $2,000, you made 20x on your investment. If you bought bitcoin at $1,000 and sold it at $20,000, you made 20x on your investment. If you bought bitcoin at $10,000 and plan to sell it at $200,000, you will make 20x on your investment. Same result, regardless of price. Whether you have 100 BTC or .001 BTC, you get the same benefits as the price goes up. There’s a reason dollar-cost averaging works so well. You take price out of the equation. What you’re left with is the opportunity. Pure opportunity. Good things come to those who wait Instead of price, think about the risks and rewards. What do you stand to lose vs. what do you stand to gain? From September to December 2019 and March to October 2020, you had low-risk, high-reward opportunities to buy bitcoin. Anybody following had a chance to buy bitcoin (and altcoins) at a massive discount. my plan for bitcoin's bull market Those opportunities will come again. Bitcoin’s price will not go up forever. Eventually, it will hit a market cycle peak and crash 70-80% so you can accumulate bitcoin to your heart’s content. In between peaks, you usually get multiple drops of 40% or more. Those are perfect times to buy. The risks are low and the upside is literally infinite. Could we get one of those opportunities now? You bet. Even a drop to $18,000 would make a lot of sense. It would fit bitcoin’s historical price movements and align with typical crashes after strong moves in any asset, digital or real. We could also go straight up to $100,000. Don’t worry about the price. Wait for good opportunities, then act decisively. They come around maybe two to four times each year. Subscribe to my newsletter and you’ll know when those opportunities are. You'll also get an early warning for when we will approach the market cycle peak. Crypto is Easy When you wait until the market's zooming, you will always have the odds stacked against you. You will always have to play catch-up. And in the end, it won’t matter—up is up, 100% gains are 100% gains, and none of that depends on price. Why chase pumps and buy dips? Wait until the market turns in your favor, then load up. Reflect on your intentions While you’re waiting, think about why you’re in this market. Do you really want bitcoin, or do you want to sell it for more of your government’s money? Perhaps that’s a more important question than “what price should I buy bitcoin at?” Life will give you many, many chances to make money and build wealth. Crypto has already given you lots of those chances, too—and it will again. If you save your money and wait for those opportunities, you will not need to worry about anything that’s happening today. You will build wealth without the stress of crashes or concern about any movements in bitcoin’s price. If you just want to get more money as quickly as possible, there’s probably an online casino just waiting for your business. Have some fun there, then come back when you care about the revolution more than you care about your government’s money. Bitcoin will be here waiting for you—possibly with another opportunity of a lifetime. Mark Helfman publishes the newsletter. He is also a top bitcoin writer on and . His three books explore the social, cultural, and business challenges of cryptocurrency. Learn more about him in his . Crypto is Easy Medium Hacker Noon bio Originally published on . Voice.com

Bitcoin’s Price is Immaterial: Focus on Opportunities NOT Price

Did you see the CNN headline? “ “ Bitcoin plunges more than 20% in three days. It’s now in a bear market Uh huh. Chalk it up to an editor mistaking “bear” for “bull.” At least I hope so. People have started shouting “bull market” for only the past few months, but the truth is bitcoin’s been in a bull market for two years. Some things never change For almost all of 2020, I heard people talk about the bitcoin bear market. In January 2019, bitcoin’s price was $3,200. In January 2020, its price was $7,347. In January 2021, as of the day I wrote this, its price is $34,000. Does that sound like a bear market? Now, one dip and the whole thing’s coming to an end? This “crash” didn’t even break bitcoin’s parabolic uptrend. Look at the blue line, a projection of bitcoin’s price based on the past three months’ rise: Still on pace to hit $100,000 in mid-February. We could drop another 30% from today’s price and still match a typical bitcoin crash. That would mark a 40% drop from the recent peak of $41,000 and blend in with the price chart. Check out all the times bitcoin crashed 40% or more: Bitcoin’s price has fallen 40% many times—usually, on the way UP. What about an even bigger crash? Definitely possible. Look at the drops of 50% or more: Volatility does not mean doom That massive 2018 crash still lingers in people’s minds. These smaller, more recent drops only serve to reinforce the fear of another, bigger one. Could bitcoin go into another bear market now? Sure. All bull markets end eventually. A 25% drop will hardly end it. From today’s price, bitcoin’s price could drop 50% and remain in a healthy, long-term uptrend. And still people will not believe in this bull market. What will it take to convince them? When it all falls down The good thing is, whenever that bear market comes, another bull market will follow it. And just like in early 2019, nobody except you and I will notice until bitcoin’s price has gone so high, so far that it’s too late to catch up. Let’s not call for a bear market until we have some evidence. If you want that $1 million bitcoin everybody dreams about, you have to accept massive crashes along the way. Some crashes are setbacks, others cause actual bear markets. We have had a setback, but that does not mean the bull market has ended. Expect higher prices. And crashes. And, eventually, a bear market. Just not yet. Consensusland Bitcoin or Bust: Wall Street’s Entry Into Cryptocurrency Mark Helfman publishes the Crypto is Easy newsletter. He is also a top bitcoin writer on Medium and Hacker Noon . His books, and , explore the social, cultural, and business challenges of cryptocurrency. Learn more about him in his bio . Originally published on . Voice.com Disclaimer: The contents of this article are the opinion of the author alone and do not reflect the opinions of Hacker Noon as a whole. Nothing in this article constitutes professional investment advice. Please do your own research before making any trades.

Bitcoin Has Been in a Bull Market for 2 Years

With bitcoin’s price exploding and the total cryptocurrency market blasting through $1 trillion, you may think it’s getting big. Huge, even. Wall Street luminaries like Paul Tudor Jones and Jamie Dimon are telling people to buy bitcoin. Long-time skeptics like Nouriel Roubini begrudgingly admit it's a “partial store value.” S&P Dow Jones announced it will create crypto indices in 2021. Former bitcoin-basher JP Morgan is now building a book of business among crypto companies. Goldman Sachs formed a digital assets group. Fidelity has had one for almost two years. You ain’t seen nothing yet. A thimble’s worth of water in an ocean full of wealth Sometimes we look at crypto and see big numbers. For example, $700 billion bitcoin market cap, $25 billion in stablecoins, $15 billion in Graystone Bitcoin Trust, $20 billion assets on DeFi lending platforms, 100 million bitcoin wallets, 15 million active daily users of Brave browser, and so on. Once you start talking about millions and billions, it seems like the market is huge. For us, maybe. For the world, it’s not. Look at the numbers: More than for U.S. households alone. When you include savings from people in other countries, that amount goes much higher. $19 trillion in cash, savings, and money market accounts Over . $26 trillion in U.S.-registered investment funds More than $100 trillion in government debt. Over $200 trillion in corporate and household debt. At least $400 trillion in financial products like derivatives and collateralized loan obligations. Hundreds of trillions of dollars in real assets like property, cars, and collectibles. In total, over worth of “stuff” that you can record on a blockchain and exchange using cryptocurrency. $1 quadrillion If a $40,000 bitcoin seems crazy and all these altcoins seem overpriced, consider the bigger picture. So many ways to capture wealth Blockchain technology continues to scale and innovate. Some governments have already moved to digital currencies. Banks have quietly pocketed hundreds of blockchain patents. As everything moves to a natively digital environment, will capture its value, even if only as stablecoins or virtual representations of real-world assets. something Developers have already developed protocols that give users all the benefits of traditional finance with no commissions. As a result, they’re quietly building decentralized margin accounts, insurance funds, staking rewards, synthetic assets, liquidity pools, and  derivatives. And almost all of the benefits go to those who use these platforms and hold their associated tokens. No brokers, custodians, or investment firms taking a cut of their money. Over the long run, which service will win: the one that costs almost nothing and returns the benefits to users, or the one users have to pay for and keeps all the benefits for itself? In this inevitable future, traditional commerce can’t compete with these global, open, permissionless financial networks that record and track the movements of things with mathematical precision and no middlemen. “Value,” as measured in money, will have to move out of the traditional financial system and into cryptocurrency. Think about token sets and PIES, two types of computer programs that offer non-custodial access to diversified investment portfolios. Rather than pay somebody for access to investment funds, you buy a stake in a protocol that does all the work for you. Or, consider applications that maximize yield by moving unlimited amounts of money at virtually no cost. The catch: in order to do these things, you need some way to capture that value in a form that people can freely exchange with each other. In other words, you cryptocurrency. need When you anticipate everything will run on a blockchain within a few decades, a $1 trillion cryptocurrency market doesn’t seem like much Not just decentralized finance Decentralized finance, aka DeFi, will revolutionize financial markets. What about non-financial markets? For example, the world wastes a lot of energy. Some places produce more than they need while other places face chronic shortages. Once you tokenize energy consumption as a cryptocurrency, you can create secondary markets and new distribution channels. You can embed carbon emissions credits, rebates, and incentives into the tokens. Power plants and distributors can mint their own tokens when they create energy and burn those tokens as people consume energy. What about decentralized autonomous organizations for corporate and community assets? Security tokens for real estate development? With cryptocurrency, you have seemingly infinite ways to capture wealth. It’s just a matter of building the right platforms. Fortunately, we have a lot of people building those platforms. They toil in the shadow of bitcoin and DeFi, but their work will get its proper recognition. They’ve barely scratched the surface of what they can do. Slowly, then all at once If that seems like the pipe dream of some distant future, it’s a dream that’s getting built today. Once it’s ready, you’ll be surprised by how quickly it becomes a reality. Did you know that some of these DeFi projects spent three or more years in development before going parabolic? Progress sneaks up on you, sometimes. When I started writing , I consulted with a few projects, including Aave. At that time, they called themselves ETHLend. They had barely gotten started. Consensusland Who would have known they’d emerge as a top DeFi project two years later? It takes a long time to become an overnight sensation. Once it happens, everything changes. Despite bitcoin hitting new all-time highs, cryptocurrency is still a very small market. How big could it grow? The moon’s the limit. Mark Helfman publishes the newsletter. He is also a top bitcoin writer on and . His books, and , explore the social, cultural, and business challenges of cryptocurrency. Learn more about him in his . Crypto is Easy Hacker Noon Medium Consensusland Bitcoin or Bust: Wall Street’s Entry Into Cryptocurrency bio Originally published on Voice.com .

Cryptocurrency is Just Getting Started

I know a few people in finance. None of them fear cryptocurrency, even though the technology will make them obsolete. Some plan to get out with what they can before cryptos take over. Most want to hop on the train before it leaves the station. More and more with every passing day, as bitcoin's price goes higher and higher. Does that get you excited? All those rich people and big investors bidding up the price of bitcoin. Businesses and investment funds pouring cash into crypto. After all, this is the first time you can own a financial asset before “smart money” does. When else will you have a chance to get ahead of Wall Street? Two wolves and a sheep voting over what’s for dinner If you think “institutional investors” will send bitcoin’s price to the moon, you’re probably right. Their small purchases have already pushed bitcoin's price past its previous all-time high. Imagine how much higher they will push bitcoin's price once they start putting money into it? real It sounds great to pad your pockets with Wall Street's money, but at what cost? You’re talking about the savviest, best-connected, most deep-pocketed network of professionals on earth. They’re not getting into bitcoin because they care about open, permissionless, borderless, neutral, censorship-resistant money systems. They’re getting into bitcoin to make money for themselves and their clients. You’re simply liquidity. You’re the one who sells when they need to buy, buys when they need to sell, and pushes the value up long enough for them to cash out with a profit. Dewey Cheatham and Howe, CFAs In , I talk about all the ways they will use their money and power to take cryptocurrency away from you, like they did with every other financial asset. Bitcoin or Bust: Wall Street’s Entry Into Cryptocurrency For example, they may tell your government to force everybody to use an “authorized entity” instead of private wallets. That authorized entity would have to meet certain requirements—requirements that only a Wall Street firm could meet. After all, we can’t let bitcoin fall into the hands of criminals and terrorists, right? Can you imagine new laws that force you to hire Fidelity as your “cryptocurrency service provider?” Wall Street can. Telecom did this to the internet in 1996. Why can’t traditional finance do this to bitcoin now? Or, maybe it will get your government to allow the commingling of cryptocurrency with other assets. While this lets Wall Street create new financial products—i.e., new ways to make money—it . introduces massive risks for cryptocurrency markets As always, take the risks while get the money. you they Maybe Wall Street will get the U.S. government to give it sole control over airdrops, ICOs, STOs, IEOs, and other activities that result in new cryptocurrency? It’s possible Wall Street firms will buy up all the small cryptocurrency exchanges and custodial wallet providers, integrate their wallets into new payment networks, and effectively push light wallets out of the market. No more private keys. And what happens when Bakkt sets up a node on the Lightning Network? While nobody’s watching . . . Wall Street has a lot of money and power. Once it gets into the cryptocurrency markets, it will use this money and power for influence—marketing, lobbying, and networking. Big firms will say “hey, remember 2017? The markets were awash with scams and frauds. We came in and cleaned the place up. It’s safe now. Buy bitcoin (but buy it from us, not Coinbase, you can’t trust them).” They will try to get governments to regulate power and profits into their hands. After that, they will limit access, consolidate control, and build new risks into the financial system. It’s the same playbook time and again. Meanwhile, you and the rest of Crypto Twitter will continue to argue over central banks, monetary theory, and the role of government. When you argue about fiat vs. bitcoin, Wall Street laughs. It’s happy to make money on both. The Cryptocurrency Questions We Already Need to Be Answering (But Aren't) It’s not the bans you need to worry about With so many ways for Wall Street firms to steer crypto into their hands, I’m amazed how many people still worry about crypto bans. Don’t fear the bans. They never work. Fear the lobbyists. They work. always Somebody needs to create the tax laws, privacy protection, intellectual property frameworks, and regulatory structures that govern what people do with cryptocurrency, even if only to say “nobody can torture you for your private keys.” Somebody needs to make bitcoin easy, accessible, and safe for your average person to use. In doing so, that “somebody” has many, many opportunities to screw you over. Isn’t that what Wall Street does best? Mark Helfman is a top writer on for bitcoin. He also publishes the newsletter. His books, and , explore the social, cultural, and business challenges of cryptocurrency. Learn more about him in his . Medium Crypto is Easy Consensusland Bitcoin or Bust: Wall Street’s Entry Into Cryptocurrency bio Originally published on Voice.com .

Wall Street Wants All Of Your Bitcoin

You may think the U.S. presidential election is under dispute. It’s not. The president’s team claims fraud and tweets all sorts of evidence, but they don’t present any of that evidence in court. Even their “independent advisors” found no fraud. I suspect President Trump knows the fraud claims won’t stick, and in any event, he’s told his administration to let his successor, Joe Biden, take office. Unless something changes drastically, the U.S. will have a new president in January. Finally, a bitcoin administration Lest anybody forget, the Trump administration hated cryptocurrency. If you believe people who worked for Trump, the president ordered his administration to “go after” bitcoin. His Treasury Secretary called crypto a national security issue. His law enforcement agencies worked to de-privatize transactions. One of his former financial regulators bragged about conspiring to kill the 2017 bull market. You can expect the Biden administration to take a more favorable view. Not sure it could get any worse. Bitcoin ETF, anybody? Safe harbor for small investors? Sane tax guidance and regulations? U.S. federal funding for blockchain projects and blockchain-for-government efforts? Those things are a lot more likely with this administration than the outgoing one. Some of the President-elect Biden’s biggest donors have strong ties to crypto. Silicon Valley has a lot of influence in Democratic Party circles and Wall Street has its hands in both parties’ pockets. If you believe the rumors about who Biden will appoint as cabinet officials and top advisors, you will find a slew of pro-crypto, pro-blockchain appointees, including his likely securities regulator and Secretary of Labor. In a boon for everybody who loves BRRR memes, his pick for Treasury Secretary is an inflation dove who has historically supported low interest rates and cheap money (her stance on crypto is not as clear). Also, the Democratic Party skews younger, both in absolute numbers and as a proportion of people who register as Democrats compared to Republicans. Many surveys show young people have more positive opinions of cryptocurrency than old people. Still, presidents can only do so much. They don’t make laws. That’s Congress’s job. U.S. regulations come from financial laws that are 50 to 86 years old. Until those laws change, the president has limited power. He can issue regulatory approvals and guidance, perhaps sign a few executive orders. Significant actions but hardly game-changers. So it really depends on how much emphasis the new administration puts on cryptocurrency and pushing Congress for crypto legislation. A new crypto coalition? If we’re speculating on hypotheticals, I can imagine an interesting dynamic could play out within the Democratic Party. This party has a lot of pro-Wall Street people and a lot of anti-Wall Street people. The pro-Wall Street people want institutional and government involvement to clean up the cryptocurrency industry and make money from it, while the anti-Wall Street people think cryptocurrency can destroy what they see as an unfair system that rewards rich people for ripping off poor people and small businesses. Maybe they’ll find kindred spirits with Republicans that value free markets, individual liberties, small government, and low taxes. As a result, the U.S. will finally get sensible cryptocurrency laws. Or not. It’s fun to speculate. In any event, cryptocurrency is a bipartisan issue — namely, neither party cares about it much. It may rise in prominence as the market attracts more investment and prices go up, but it’s anybody’s guess how Washington will respond. But won’t Biden lock down the U.S.? We’ll see. Until he takes office on January 20, 2021, Biden can’t do anything. A lot can change in two months. Whatever happens, I doubt it will affect crypto. The entire market doubled during our previous lockdown and big money gobbled up tons of bitcoin. It continues to rise despite lockdowns in some parts of the world and new COVID-19 restrictions in some parts of the U.S. I can’t see why another lockdown would get a different result. Let’s hope we don’t have to find out. In conclusion, none of this matters While it’s nice to think the Biden administration will bring sanity to the U.S. regulatory and legal treatment of bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry, it doesn’t matter for prices. Bitcoin is a global commodity and Wall Street has built the legal, operational, and regulatory infrastructure to move lots of money into the markets. Soon, greed will take over. It probably already has. In the long run, bitcoin’s price will continue to rise no matter what the Biden administration does, as will the entire crypto market. But prices will not go up forever. Once we get the inevitable crash that comes at the end of each market cycle, we will need good laws, fair regulations, and reasonable protections for businesses and investors. Only then can these open, permissionless financial systems grow, thrive, and deliver the freedom, innovation, and efficiencies everybody expects they will. No industry thrives in chaos. Speculation alone can’t sustain cryptocurrency. Let’s hope the Biden administration cares about that, too. . . books Consensusland Bitcoin or Bust: Wall Street’s Entry Into Cryptocurrency, Mark Helfman publishes the Crypto is Easy newsletter He is also a top writer on Medium for bitcoin His , and explore the social, cultural, and business challenges of cryptocurrency. Learn more about him in his bio . Originally published on Voice.com .

While The Results Are Not In, Bitcoin is The Winner in the U.S. Presidential Election 2020

With bitcoin’s price booming and its market cap reaching all-time highs, you can excuse people for getting excited. When money talks, people listen. Now that price has gone up for a while, I sense a shift in mindset and perspective around bitcoin. Long-time haters have started to begrudgingly admit “there might be something there” or it’s a “partial store of value.” Yet, even among those who have started to change their minds, they don’t really “get” it. They just see its price going up and wonder what they’re missing. They don’t think about the significance of a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, nor why people get so hyped about it. For many, bitcoin is a millennial thing that they can get rich off of. The merits? Not so important. The message? Meh, it’s going up faster than gold. This article is my response to everybody that dismisses bitcoin as a Millennial thing that’s only good for making money. In one sense, it’s a defense of bitcoin from people who can’t understand why it has any value or why we would spend our time and money on it. In another sense, it’s a reflection on Millennials—our history and values. As the first generation that came of age in the 21st Century, we have a unique perspective that’s worth exploring. It’s not about the money When I talk about bitcoin, I get the same questions again and again: “What’s it backed by? Should I buy it? Do you think its price will keep going up?” Instead of opening up conversations about the nature of wealth, finance, privacy, and government, it always comes back to money. Yes, bitcoin is money, but it’s also than money. more Bitcoin allows free, public access to financial networks on demand, without restriction, anywhere, any time. As you read this, developers and businesses have already started using this open, permissionless payment protocol to build real products and services that lower the costs of doing business, remove barriers that keep entrepreneurs from getting loans and taking payments, and make money easy, cheap, and convenient for people who don’t have banks or good governments. This is a luxury we take for granted, but for many people, it’s a privilege normally reserved for a select few. And this matters because . . . . . . because it’s all happening organically, without any government involvement or subsidy. It’s happening the opposition of powerful elites. despite To understand why that’s so important, you need to understand the story of the Millennial generation. You need to understand why so many of us have lost trust and faith in our leaders. The Millennial generation entered adulthood during a recession followed by a war, followed by another war, followed by a financial collapse, followed by a massive bailout of wealthy people and large banks, followed by a massive tax cut for the rich and powerful, followed by more debt, pandemic disease, another recession, and coordinated government interventions designed to make the rich get richer. We have grown up in the midst of the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich, while the poor remain poor—all of it financed with debt and subsidized by workers. You told us that the stock market always goes up, a house is the key to wealth, and education is the key to a great job. Then you crashed the stock market, made houses too expensive to buy, raised entry-level requirements, and lowered entry-level pay. When we skimp on savings to pay our landlords and pay back our student loans, we’re not being irresponsible. We’re trying to dig out of the hole you put us in. Other generations mock our lifestyle choices. They build their political power and financial fortunes from our time, talent, and ingenuity, then blame us for their problems. How many things have millennials killed so far? Google it. That’s the story of the Millennial generation. The system has failed In the U.S., our generation has seen our government pass a budget on time ONCE. Twice, it didn’t pass a budget at all. And never have any of those budgets been balanced. We have gone from a war against terror to a war against trade to a war against ballots. From a president who cheated on his wife to a president who cheated on his country. We have seated three presidents, but only one got into office by winning the majority of the votes. Our fourth president will take office amid accusations of fraud. Our electoral experience starts with dangling chads, continues with Russian interference, and ends with frivolous lawsuits. Our votes are gerrymandered, cherry-picked, and where there are too many people affiliated with one party or another, ignored. Our politicians rig the system in favor of their own interests or against their opponents’ interests while the voters lavish votes and money on whichever party seems to say the right things at the right time. Each party conspires to undermine the Constitution in one way or another, the only question being how and how openly. We’re being pummeled by political parties while we argue about which fist we prefer, the left or the right. Some say we should be more politically active, but the moment we run for office, they call us young, inexperienced, naive, stupid, reckless, and ignorant. That’s the story of the Millennial generation. Leaders, where are ye? Instead of bringing us together, our leaders insist on pitting us against each other. Main Street against Wall Street. Wall Street against farmers. Farmers against coal miners. Coal miners against high school students. High school students against gunmakers. Gunmakers against black people. Black people against the police. The police do everything right almost every moment of every day. They save us from fear, terror, and death, preserve safety and order for millions, and improve our communities in many ways—but one horrible mistake, one incident out of millions, and they’re despised. A knee taken on a sideline destroys a man’s livelihood. A knee taken on a neck destroys another man’s life. And still, everybody misses the point. When we advocate for what matters, we aren’t advocating for the oppressed. We’re advocating for our friends and colleagues. Our neighbors and family. Our coaches and teachers. When we say we want a country where we can run for public office without fear our president will coerce a foreign country to frame our children for fake crimes simply because we campaign against him, it’s not because we’re mad about the last election. It’s because we care about the integrity of our government and the rule of law. One day, principles will matter more than votes, money, and earned media. Until then, it’s feed the beast, wag the dog, bread and circus. That’s the story of the Millennial generation. Fakes, frauds, and failures Our leaders have the power to stop all of this, but they don’t. Instead, they use their power to incite more hatred and violence. They claim to serve those cherished institutions that have bound us together for generations, but they use those same institutions to rip us apart. Social media platforms claim to offer a voice to the voiceless, but their algorithms spread only the most salacious and aggressive messages while hiding anything they consider mundane. Outrage is bought and sold. Controversy is mass produced—better yet when it’s perfectly tailored for a fundraising letter or a campaign speech. We live in a world of fake news spread by fake profiles where the only thing that’s real is the artificial intelligence that created them. Fact is fiction and Facebook is reality. Anybody can ignite a culture war with 280 characters typed into a cellphone and posted on an electronic bulletin board, all the while, solving nothing. All that anger and nothing changes. That’s the story of the Millennial generation. Bitcoin fixes this So what’s that got to do bitcoin? Why does bitcoin matter to us? Because bitcoin doesn’t care about any of that. It doesn’t care where you live, how much you make, or who you marry. Interest rates too high or too low? Doesn’t affect bitcoin. Data breaches? Bitcoin doesn’t use your personal data. Banking collapse? Bitcoin doesn’t need banks. Corporate bailouts? Welfare state? Immigration? Tariffs? Trade wars? COVID-19? None of that matters to bitcoin. It’s just an algorithm. A computer program. It doesn’t get strong or weak based on what political party is in power or who sits on the Federal Reserve Board. You don’t lose your bitcoin when you get fired or when your company goes out of business, like you lose your healthcare or your pension. You can’t bribe bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn’t care how old you are, how young you are, how rich you are, how poor you are, whether you have a job, or whether you don’t have a job. It doesn’t treat you differently if you’re wearing a suit instead of t-shirt or because you share the same skin color as the person you’re doing business with. It doesn’t lavish money on big businesses while throwing crumbs of fortune at the small ones. It will never sell your personal information to a company or government that will use it against you. Bitcoin will never do any of those things—it’s programmed not to. No “anti” here, just a choice For all the things I’ve said, I don’t think by and large this generation dislikes banks and governments and powerful institutions. Most of us aren’t rallying or lobbying about that. Most of us don’t really think about it. We’re doing what every other generation does—buying, saving, borrowing, working, and living. We use all the conventional “things” you use in a developed economy. 90% of us have a checking account. If we need a loan, we get a loan. If we need a credit card, we get a credit card. If we want to buy something, we buy something. There’s no “anti” here. We use whatever’s convenient. Whatever works often enough that we’re OK with. The difference is, we have bitcoin. With bitcoin, we have a choice. The choice is: Trust a steady, mathematically proven, immutable process that no person can control or manipulate, that always gives you the result you expect. Trust a government and financial system that have always failed us. Get your head out of the bubbles I realize previous generations don’t see this as a choice. They just think it’s silly. They would never put their fate in the hands of a formula, a network of strangers, an asset that only exists in pixels and lines of computer code. I get it, and it’s a valid point. My problem is, the conversation keeps us from getting into that. The conversation begins and ends with “that’s YOUR thing” and in between, you get a whole bunch of people who can’t get over the idea that bitcoins are not backed by anything. “It’s ridiculous! It’s a bubble! I don’t get it. It doesn’t solve any problems. You can’t make money from it. Nobody uses it. It always crashes. It’s slow and expensive. Rat poison squared. Stupid internet money. I’m buying gold.” Every blockchain project that fails is met with “I told you so.” Every time the price of bitcoin goes down, “I told you so.” That’s the story of the Millennial generation: “I told you so.” It started with the dot-com bust, a tragedy we had nothing to do with. In 2000, after the bubble burst, all we heard was “the internet was a stupid, terrible idea, a big bubble, it doesn’t solve any problems, you can’t make any money from it, nobody uses it. Stupid. Told you so.” Meanwhile, our hopes of a great paying job disappeared when the market collapsed. A few years later, we climbed out of that hole and started putting money into the one asset that everybody said was the BEST investment you could make, the key to financial freedom, the bedrock of the American Dream — a house. And what happened? The housing market collapsed. In some places, it hasn’t recovered. Which one was the bubble? Today, we may not own houses as much as older generations, but we use the internet. It’s everywhere. It’s everything. It’s what kept the world moving when the pandemic hit. It saved millions of people’s lives. It’s the first big innovation we ever had and it’s the innovation that molded us. And you said it was a stupid, terrible idea. Go buy a house. So when you say bitcoin is a stupid, terrible idea, yet you’re reading this article because of the internet, from a guy who wrote two books that would have been impossible to research without the internet, distributed through a network that would not have existed without the internet, publishing an article that you can view for free everywhere in the world because of the internet, to an audience that would have never known about it without the internet, with as much authenticity and credibility as the most famous expert in this field . . . do you think I’m going to believe you when you say “I told you so” about bitcoin? No. That’s not the story of the Millennial generation. We have a choice. Our choice is: Trust a steady, mathematically proven, immutable process that no person can control or manipulate, that always gives you the result you expect. Trust a government and financial system that have always failed us. Which would you choose? Mark Helfman is a top writer on for bitcoin. He also publishes the newsletter. His books, and , explore the social, cultural, and business challenges of cryptocurrency. Learn more about him in his . Medium Crypto is Easy Consensusland Bitcoin or Bust: Wall Street’s Entry Into Cryptocurrency bio This story was also published on Voice.com .

Why Bitcoin Matters to Millennials

Ponzi, fraud, and rat poison squared. Those are three terms you may have heard people use when talking about bitcoin. If you’re in that camp, you have good company. Pretty much everybody hates bitcoin. I had a chance to chat with a podcaster who doesn't have such a negative view of "the orange coin," but nonetheless seemed unmoved in his skepticism. Guess what? Bitcoin will succeed anyway. Yes, all arguments against bitcoin start with facts, but facts do not always tell the truth. Perspective is important, too. Read below for some statements that don’t matter, even though they're true. Bitcoin sucks because . . . Let’s run down a few reasons people hate bitcoin. You can’t use it without electricity. Can’t fool you, smarty pants! Do you know what else you can’t use without electricity? Almost everything. When people tell you about the iPhone 12, that new power drill, or Dyson’s latest creation, you never tell them “yea, but that needs electricity to work.” Your bank doesn’t work without electricity, either. Neither does a cash register. Did you know you need electricity to use the internet? Crazy, I know. But it’s true! Just wait until people find out. They’ll never touch a computer again! that You can’t use it without the internet. Good point. You can hardly do without the internet! Modern life is tough. anything (Though technically, you can use satellites and SMS services to send and receive bitcoin, almost nobody would ever do that.) Nothing backs it. Who cares? It works! Try going into a bank and asking to redeem your $20 bill. They’ll give you a ten and two fives and escort you out the door. It’s just like Venmo. Yes, kind of . . . but that misses the point, right? That’s like going back to 1990 and saying “I’m not going to use email, it’s just like a fax machine” or going back to 1960 and saying “a calculator? Nah, that’s just a slow slide rule.” Those other cryptocurrencies are useless because . . . Altcoins suffer an even crueler fate. They get bashed by normal people bitcoiners. What do they say about the alts? and We already have something that does that. Yes, and most likely, it’s overly complicated and needlessly expensive. Except, until cryptocurrency, nobody realized how complicated and expensive it was because we never had a technology that could replace it. Nobody thought they needed smartphones until somebody created a smartphone. Likewise, nobody thought they needed a computer until somebody created a computer. Nobody thought they needed a printing press until somebody created a printing press. At the time, people were OK with flip phones, notepads, and quills. Yet here we are. . You don’t need a token for that Obviously. Did you know you don’t need a token for anything? Yep! Start a business, have kids, make charm bracelets—you name it, no token needed. In fact, you don’t need anything except food, water, and shelter. Tokens simply incentivize everybody to participate in a network, with a blockchain that ensures people’s actions will always get the results they expect. Could you use something else? Ditch the token entirely? Maybe. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. For blockchains, tokens fit the bill nicely. . Bitcoin can do that Eventually, probably. While we wait for bitcoin to solve all its problems, altcoins are giving it a go. As they grow, some will capture strong network effects and find important uses. As a result, they’ll work alongside bitcoin to serve many different needs. Or, perhaps, migrate to a bitcoin sidechain. Why do we have to wait for bitcoin to catch up? There are too many of them Of course we don’t need 6,000 cryptocurrencies, but lots of people have lots of ideas about things you can do with crypto. Why not let them experiment with it? Nobody ever asks “why do we need so many restaurants?” or “why do we need so many websites?” The stories we tell ourselves . . . Does this mean there’s a double-standard for bitcoin? One standard for every other financial asset and transaction protocol, another for a peer-to-peer electronic cash network with its own unit of account? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it’s irrelevant. Once bitcoin’s price starts going up long enough for people to believe it will keep going up, lots of people will gladly ignore or rationalize these problems away. Few have the patience to continue losing money with cash and bonds, making small or no gains with stocks, and sitting on their hands while bitcoin doubles, triples, or quadruples in price. At that point, they’ll come up with new arguments—e.g., “it’s the way everything’s going,” “it’s different now,” “the banks are doing it,” “you need to protect against inflation,” “put a few shekels in, you never know.” Sure, those arguments also start from a point of truth, just like yours. And, like yours, they have facts to back them up. They are also irrelevant. People will tell themselves whatever they need to tell themselves to justify whatever they want to do. Once bitcoin’s price goes up for long enough, you might do the same. . . books Consensusland Bitcoin or Bust: Wall Street’s Entry Into Cryptocurrency Mark Helfman publishes the Crypto is Easy newsletter He is also a top writer on Medium for bitcoin His , and , explore the social, cultural, and business challenges of cryptocurrency. Learn more about him in his bio . Also published on Voice.com .

"Is Bitcoin Useless?" Your Scepticism is Noted, But Immaterial

“The global bastard,” COVID-19, continues to wreck everything, but this will change sooner than you think. Since the outbreak began, the world has ramped up its production of medical supplies, tests, and personal protective equipment. Scientists now have several promising vaccine candidates, effective treatments, and drugs that help people get less sick, need less care, and die less often. It may take a while to get these interventions into the hands of everybody who needs them, but it’s no longer a question of . Now, the only question is . if when I’ll bet sooner than later. Once we tame COVID-19 and life starts to get back to normal—whatever “normal” means in the post-COVID-19 world—humanity will have massive problems to deal with. Poor people and blue-collar workers will realize how much they’ve suffered under COVID-19 while white-collar workers largely did ok. Governments will have massive budget deficits. Central banks will carry trillions of dollars in worthless assets on their balance sheets. Pensions will fall short on their obligations. All that on top of all the problems that existed before COVID-19. What role will bitcoin play? The global economy may take a very long time to recover. For many bitcoin advocates, this gives bitcoin a chance to show its true value. What is that value? An anti-fragile and anti-inflationary money system. An impartial and unbiased payment network with a fixed and predictable monetary policy, based on open and accessible protocols. Money for all. Which is why my chat groups have exploded with humblebrags about bitcoin gains, price targets, and DeFi’s latest hype-coin. Obviously, they’re all about the vision. What did Paul Tudor Jones say about bitcoin? Oh, Dave Portnoy’s into it now? Wait, we hit $13,000?? Aunt Sally asked me whether to buy it??? Price goes down? Buy the dip, we’re going back to all-time highs! Price goes up? Screw the bankers, we’re going back to all-time highs! Bloomberg said something nice about bitcoin? We’re going mainstream!!!! And I thought they were in it for the tech. Silly me. But Mark, bitcoin going mainstream . . . is True. My friends have started asking me about it again. While most people sat on their hands as prices zoomed this spring and summer, institutional bitcoin funds added $5 billion in new investments, quadruple the amount of all previous years combined. Bitcoin ATMs have grown at a parabolic rate. After telling investors bitcoin is not an asset class, Goldman Sachs hired a new director of digital assets. (Which is like saying “cars are useless” and then hiring a director of automotive technology.) Some corporations have pulled bitcoin into their financial reserves. The total number of bitcoin wallets continues to grow. Buying, selling, and using bitcoin is easier, safer, and better-regulated than ever before. Lightning Network, a payment system built on bitcoin’s blockchain, recently reached all-time highs in the number of participants and payment capacity. People in Lebanon and Argentina report trusting bitcoin more than their nation’s currencies. Do bitcoiners brag about any of that? No. I’ve never seen anybody bring those up in a chat group. Once in a while on Twitter (maybe), tucked in with dozens of tweets about when to short and how we’re going to get rekt or go to the moon. When money talks . . . Bitcoin’s price go up. will That’s not a hope or mere speculation. Every metric, data point, and historical correlation predicts bitcoin’s price will go up for several more years, as it’s done since the beginning of 2019. The question is what will we do with all those gains? Will we just recycle them from one lending platform to another to max out our returns? Or dump them into some DeFi scheme? Will we use cheap cash to pump up the price so we can sell our stakes to somebody dumber or more greedy than we are? In the post-COVID world, where humanity struggles to find its path forward, how can bitcoin grow if its biggest advocates talk only about its price? If its biggest selling feature is “price go up?” What happens if we never give people a chance to care about the true revolution—open, permissionless financial networks that nobody can manipulate, defraud, or deceive? What happens if they don’t care about that? Worse, what happens if don’t care about that, either? Moonshots do strange things to people . . . we Bitcoin’s true COVID-19 opportunity Undoubtedly, bitcoin’s in the middle of a big, multiyear upswing. Today, the price may have fallen, but the trajectory is clear: up. When bitcoin’s price goes up, attention always follows. Will this renewed attention lead to better, freer, more equitable money systems? Can we use this moment to make finance and commerce accessible to everybody, not just a lucky few? We can, but only if we choose to. No matter how gloomy the future seems, humanity always wins. We have an amazing capacity to learn, change, and persist. We embrace new concepts when they make our lives better and reject old concepts when experience shows us a better way. To succeed, bitcoin needs to do only one thing: give humans a better way. This is the next challenge. Who will accept it? DISCLAIMER: All opininons in this article belong to the author alone. They do not reflect the opinions of the Hacker Noon company as a whole. . Consensusland Bitcoin or Bust: Wall Street’s Entry Into Cryptocurrency Mark Helfman is a top writer for bitcoin He also publishes the Crypto is Easy newsletter. His books, and , explore the social, cultural, and business challenges of cryptocurrency. Learn more about him in his bio . Previously published at https://app.voice.com/post/@markhelfman/once-covid19-ends-bitcoin-will-need-to-do-more-than-go-up-1599794627-1

What Will Happen to Bitcoin When COVID-19 Ends?

Cryptocurrency is full of people who believe in old economic theories that have never been tried in the real world. There’s an almost zealous adherence to esoteric principles that seem to have no place in our modern lives. Fitting, perhaps, for a niche technology whose earliest followers — and most ardent advocates — came to it as an escape from convention. You would expect them to hold unconventional beliefs. For the rest of us, convention is ok. Mainstream economics seems to work well enough. Or does it? Is it really so much better than those archaic theories bitcoiners throw around? When I studied economics in college, a professor told my class a joke about a doctoral student who presented her dissertation idea to her mentor. After she finished, her mentor said: “yes, that works , but does it work in practice in theory?” Modern economics relies heavily on “all else being equal” and the empirical study of human activities that you can never replicate in a scientific setting. Once you step into the real world, all else is never equal. With time and effort, research always reveals some truths, principles, and goals. That’s nice, but it only gets you so far. You’ll never find a one-handed economist. Does printing money lead to inflation? That’s a very basic question, yet economists disagree. Sometimes, printing money leads to inflation. Sometimes, it doesn’t. We have theories, not proof. Cryptocurrency can change that. A proving ground for monetary discovery With cryptocurrency, you can create a money system from your laptop and scale it globally, instantly, in any configuration you want, with all participants forced to follow your rules. As a result, you can test economic theories in the real world, with scientific precision and all the controls you need. Until now, we did not have any technology that could do this. Just as telescopes forced us to rethink our assumptions about the earth and electricity forced us to rethink our assumptions about physics, cryptocurrency will force us to rethink our assumptions about money. What discoveries will we find? What innovations will we create? Everything is possible. For example, a group of financial engineers created yEarn Finance, a platform for finding the best lending rates on stablecoins. This project places governance entirely in the hands of token holders. It has no foundation, investors, or management. It’s just a computer program. Nothing else. Or Ampleforth, a financial network that rebalances users’ funds whenever the value of its token, AMPL, moves too much. As a result, users can preserve the purchasing power of their money as the network grows or shrinks. It’s all based on an algorithm. Some cryptocurrency teams like GoodDollar have started exploring universal basic income. They’re trying to figure out how to give everybody access to money without moral hazards and market inefficiencies. Others have started testing other approaches to money. The teams behind these tokens make no secret about their purpose — monetary experiments. Token holders are almost exclusively speculators who (should) realize the risks they’re taking. While these types of projects may fail, they will lead to profound insights about humans, markets, and money. They will lay the building blocks for an explosion of monetary discovery every bit as significant as the scientific revolution. Vive la révolution As more protocols gain momentum, you will hear people revert to the old, trite arguments over what is money and what is not money. They will focus on cryptocurrency as a way to transact or investment, rather than a way to create trustless networks. They’ll miss the true revolution — humans organizing themselves without a central authority to coerce them into doing things against their own best judgment. They won’t see how blockchain technology breaks down the intermediaries and gatekeepers that cause bottlenecks, complexities, costs, and conflict. They won’t understand how it promotes choice and community without undermining consensus and governance, nor care how it creates fairer, more inclusive financial and social networks. With programmable money, you can choose between the systems you want to use. If you don’t like your options, you can create your own. Think of the power humanity can harness from this technology. The urgency of now Now is not the time to obsess about the supposed Cantillon effect of central banks or the cruel misery of fiat. People are losing faith in their leaders and questioning the traditional financial system. Investors have no good places to put their money anymore. Rich people want to protect their wealth against currency devaluation and reckless governments. Businesses need better digital goods and services to prosper in the post-COVID-19 world. Everybody worries about how long our economic crisis will last, and what will happen to them before it ends. These are real problems, today. We’re at the start of a massive shift in global monetary thought, moving away from economists and political theorists towards entrepreneurs, computer scientists, developers, mathematicians, and common people like you and me. For the first time, we have the technology to create a new world order based on open, permissionless financial networks and trustless, censorship-resistant communities. Monetary innovation and choice. Inclusive markets. We no longer need theories to get us there. We have the technology to make it real. But price comes first In a few decades, everybody will look back on today and realize the importance of this moment. Until then, everybody will focus on price — as they should. In five years, you will not have a chance to get 3,000% returns from cryptocurrency, let alone the so-called moonshots you’re dreaming about. If history serves as our guide, you can expect the cryptocurrency market will get too big, governments will regulate the gains into the hands of rich people and insiders, and many projects will fail and die. Cryptocurrency will still serve a valuable role, but you and I will no longer have a chance to make money off of that. As always, those opportunities will go to the wealthy and well-connected. We’ll just use the platforms they create. Keep in mind: if you only care about making money, you’re missing the whole point. If you get wrapped up in bull markets and “wen moon” hype cycles, get off your Twitter feed. Stop obsessing over hard and soft money. Take a step back. Look beyond theory, ideology, and investments. Finally, we can test monetary concepts in the real world. We can go beyond the efficient market theory and Pareto charts. We can observe monetary policy in its purest form, without political influence and interference. What will we discover? I can’t wait to find out. Consensusland Bitcoin or Bust: Wall Street’s Entry Into Cryptocurrency Mark Helfman publishes the Crypto is Easy newsletter. He is also a top writer on Medium for bitcoin. His books, and , explore the social, cultural, and business challenges of cryptocurrency. Learn more about him in his bio . All opinions in this article belong to the original writer alone. The opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hacker Noon organization. Disclaimer: Previously published on Voice.com .

We are Entering the Age of Monetary Exploration

With bitcoin’s price gaining steam, you may think it’s about to go mainstream. Finally, the blockchain will have its day and everybody will realize the amazing power of open, permissionless financial networks and censorship-resistant money systems. Fiat oppression will end. Prosperity will return. Let freedom ring! That sounds nice, but it also misses the point. It’s not about the money Everybody thinks bitcoin is about money. In one sense, it is. In another sense, it’s about something much deeper: trust. From electricity providers to traffic signal engineers, architects to researchers, banks to brothels, and every other human endeavor, we have to trust to make sure we get what we’re expecting. somebody We plan our careers, vacations, retirements, meals — our lives — based on others doing what they say they will do. Ideally, these people would be competent, honest, fair, and trustworthy. They would work for free and honor their commitments. Some do. Most don’t. Usually, they make mistakes, charge fees, lie to you, steal from you, or argue with you. Sometimes, they share your sensitive personal information. They’re “in it for themselves.” To keep these people from ruining society, humans found ways to make them do what they said they’ll do. For example, governments, settlement companies, clearinghouses, laws, courts, accountants, signatures, and oaths. All these solutions have risks, costs, complexities, and the chance of human error. All can be corrupted. None can be scaled. It’s hard and expensive to create any uniformity or standardization. Until Bitcoin With bitcoin, you can trust you will get the result you expect without a central authority. Tokens ensure everybody follows the same rules while the blockchain guarantees your actions will get the result you intend. People lie, math does not. Computers will always do what you tell them to do. As a result, you no longer need to rely on government decrees, local regulations, or the good faith of strangers. You can safely transact with millions of people who you have never met, with whom you have no relationship, who live in a country with different laws and regulations. Bitcoin doesn’t just revolutionize money. It revolutionizes trust. If you trust bitcoin, you don’t need to trust people. Ok . . . so what? It will take decades for this idea to sink in and I don’t know how it will play out. We’re still at the “it’s like Venmo, right?” stage. How do you wrap your head around an idea that nobody’s ever tried before? What can you do with a technology that doesn’t fit your “normal” life? Can you conceive of a world where one global payment network handles all sorts of routine, day-to-day tasks like paying your parking meter and tracking your packages? I can’t. It’s a big thing to ask of people. Not the first time This is not the first time a new technology went beyond human comprehension. Electricity had the same problem when it was first harnessed into a functional power generator. From Cal Newport’s article in The New Yorker : “In 1989, the Stanford economist Paul David wanted to understand why so many companies were so slow to adopt computer technology; for historical perspective, he turned to the history of the electric dynamo, which . . . transformed industrial production [but] had also been adopted slowly. In his paper, David explained that, at the turn of the [20th] century, most factories were powered by massive central steam engines. The engines turned overhead shafts, which were connected by an intricate array of belts and pulleys to close-packed machinery. When electric motors were first introduced, factory owners tried to integrate them into their existing setups; often, they’d simply replace the hulking steam engine with a giant electric dynamo . . . [but this introduced complexities, for example,] it was hard to keep all the electrical components working; many factory owners opted to stay with steam. “In the end, it took decades for factory owners to figure out how to make the most of electric power. Eventually, they discovered that the best approach was to put a small motor on each individual piece of machinery. Since a factory no longer needed to draw power from a central engine, its equipment could be spread out. This, in turn, changed the nature of industrial architecture. Buildings that no longer required reinforced ceilings to house shafts, belts, and pulleys could incorporate windows and skylights, of the sort we know today from urban loft buildings. “Inertia, David found, had been part of the problem. Factory owners who had spent a lot of money and time building physical plants organized around central-drive trains were reluctant to commit to complex, expensive overhauls. There were imaginative obstacles: powering each machine with its own individual motor may seem like an obvious idea now, but in fact it represented a sharp break from the centralized-power model that had dominated for the previous hundred and fifty years. Finally, technological barriers stood in the way — small issues, compared to the invention of electricity, but persistent and important ones nonetheless. Someone, for instance, had to figure out how to construct a building-wide power grid capable of handling the massively variable load created by many voltage-hungry mini-motors being turned off and on unpredictably. Until that happened, it was central power or bust.” We still live in a centralized world, with centralized thinking. Bitcoin doesn’t fit yet. Others will understand, in time At this early stage in bitcoin’s development, most people do not need to care about any of that. Others will do their thinking for them. When Volta built the voltaic pile, few people realized the big revolution that came from electricity, namely, that you could supply power to anything, anywhere, any time. At the time, it didn’t make sense. How could you make energy by dipping some metals in saltwater? And why on earth would you do that, anyway? You can already get enough power from humans, mills, and steam pumps! Only a few people got it. Even then, it took decades for inventors and engineers to put electricity into machines, then decades more for those machines to go mainstream. With the pace of modern invention and production networks, you can guarantee we won’t have to wait decades for bitcoin to go mainstream. Some would argue it already has. My point is, we’ll have to wait a while longer for people to appreciate the true revolution. Inevitable progress For the next few years, as bitcoin’s price goes up, people will focus on money. They will read websites like and come away with the idea that bitcoin is a new type of money, but not much beyond that. What is Bitcoin That’s ok. Once we get more real-world products and services, people will get a better picture of what it can do. Developers will continue to deliver better applications. New products and services will sprout up seemingly overnight. Altcoins will solve some of the problems bitcoin can’t solve (yet). Many decades from now, everybody will use bitcoin without even thinking about it. Only then will you realize how truly revolutionary it is — and how lucky you were to play a small role in its development. Mark Helfman is editor of the Crypto is Easy newsletter and a top writer for bitcoin. His book, Consensusland , explores the social, cultural, legal, and business challenges of a country that runs on cryptocurrency. In a past life, he worked for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Previously published on Voice.com .

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