This 5 min video produced by CNN Business was very forward thinking for November 2014. Certainly didn't bash Bitcoin but did try to cover it fairly and raise the pros/cons of Bitcoin in its infancy.
I had a recent conversation with my parents about sending money to help pay for my sister's wedding, which they agreed to split evenly with the groom's parents. The issue was that my parents don't live in the U.S., so transferring funds from a local bank to an American bank is quite troublesome; e.g., filling out wire forms, or even sending a USD denominated check to my sister who then needs to go to a physical branch to deposit, etc.
Then it suddenly clicked to me that if my parents and sister had access to Bitcoin (or a similar cryptocurrency) they could easily complete the transfer. I explained to my parents that Bitcoin's concept is very similar to that of say, gold or diamonds, in which one could purchase these assets, then physically transfer them to the recipient who then sells it to an exchange like one of these shops in NYC:
Bitcoin simply removes the burdensome layers and allows the two parties to quickly and efficiently transfer an asset. I couldn't believe that there was a real world use case right in front of me. For all this time, I had considered Bitcoin, at best, a risky investment asset with high risk and (hopefully) high returns. For this reason, I think with clearer regulation the crypto industry has plenty of room for growth. With more regulation, it will bring more investors, who will provide more liquidity, ultimately leading to greater price stability. The biggest obstacle that I see is price volatility. Look no further than this chart showing Bitcoin's price in the past 24 hours:
I don't think there is a future for Bitcoin until the issue of price stability / volatility is addressed. According to Kitco.com, gold's performance has been relatively uneventful when compared to the stock market return for the same period:
Gold's market cap is $11 trillion versus Bitcoin's $1 trillion. There is a lot of room for Bitcoin to grow but we need stronger regulation to help improve investor confidence.
I just sent my first Bitcoin Cash (BCH) transaction from Gemini to my hardware wallet. It cost only $0.05 to transfer one whole BCH (currently worth ~$1,000). I'm very impressed by how quickly the transaction took to confirm (under 1 min) and how cheap the transfer cost. I don't know much about the Bitcoin Cash protocol until now but I would like to learn more.
I had originally purchased Bitcoin Cash because it was one of four coins offered by PayPal so I figured it must be a good enough altcoin if PayPal is willing to invest developer resources to adopt it into their network. I am bullish on Bitcoin Cash because of my experience so far.
Edit (2:38pm): Venmo, which is owned by PayPal, announced that it will now allow users to buy/sell the same four cryptocurrencies that I mentioned above. Not surprising given the relationship with PayPal but this is exciting as -- based on my anecdotal research -- there are many more young people who use Venmo over PayPal, whose demographics tend to skew towards the older crowd.
I am going to start a new series where I post a short video (approx 10 mins or shorter) each Sunday about cryptocurrencies. Today's video is about how Ethereum works. Even for a newbie like me, I understood what a Merkle Tree is and how it relates to blockchains. Hope you enjoy this short video.
Dogecoin has been a tear recently. By my count, it's had over 500% return in the past couple weeks -- my perspective is that this is a sign that the crypto community is still very nascent and reminiscent of the internet in the 1990's. There's a lot of potential in crypto and also a lot of speculation; except that this phenomenon is happening on a global scale with very little barriers to adoption. I think there is more hype coming and the peak is yet to come.
I've been trying to understand what is a smart contract. According to the GitHub post, the ELI5 version is that you're basically paying a bunch of computers on a network to process a piece of code that you send to it. I think you can think of it similar to Amazon's AWS but runs on more basic code. The costs to run a smart contract varies with the price of gas, which is paid in ETH.
And closes at $328 so a 31% pop on day 1.
Brian has written some pretty good blog posts that are worth your time.
And for posterity, here is Brian's plea to HN seeking a co-founder.
Just a reminder that this company generated EBITDA of $1.1 billion last quarter.
Anyone want to guess what they close at the end of the day, week, month? I'm not sure what the stock price will be so let's guess in percentage terms. Here's my guess for day/week/month closes vs offer price: +20%, +30%, +45%.
I'm not sure why I didn't find this before, but the main Ethereum website is very well written for a newbie. I plan to spend the afternoon reading up on some basic topics.
Over breakfast, I listened to the last MoFi podcast which interviews the creators of Cyberpunk. Very interesting to learn that when Matt Hall and John Watkinson first launched the project, it hardly had any traction. It was first announced to the public via a blog and reddit post to /r/ethereum. At the time, the only way to claim the free Cyberpunk NFT was to own a really complex Ethereum piece of software and use a janky online wallet (MetaMask didn't exist at the time); not surprisingly, there weren't many takers. However, over time as software became more accessible and people started buying the Cyberpunks (first for $1 each, then $10, then $100, etc.) the value of the collectibles started becoming apparent. To date, some Cyberpunks have sold for over a million dollars each!
My takeaway from all this, is that sometimes there is very little downside risk in adopting new things but very high outcomes. It's fun to learn new things but genuine interest should lead first, not lust for money.
To learn more about Cyberpunk:
- Visit the creators website, called Larva Labs
- Christies, the art auction company, even has a post about Cyberpunks