Crypto Regulations Stinks , SEC - We The People Of Crypto UNITE!
Here I am, 4:45 AM ET.
If there's anything super-hero-like in my personality, it may be my work ethic. I live on finding, rather grasping at, inspiration, wherever I can get it.
There's a lot of tragedy in life. More than anyone would know. I'm not a spring chicken, and the world often seems within fractions of fracturing. But, somehow I find the logical swings between just wanting to surrender to the mundane lunacy of this clown clown world in which we live, and realizing that I am not a quitter. Something in me wants to hold to idealism and measures of the man. Things like faith, hope, love, truly biblical proportions and yearnings. We live in a time where belief is frowned upon. Literally a tear in the fabric of what it means to be human.
Gordon, if you don't make this about the SEC sometime in the first 40 minutes of your read, they're going to trade you in for someone edgy and perdier- lol.
Okay, so if you are a TLDR- get out of here now! You don't deserve my time and I am not interested in begging for yours.
If you truly care about crypto, stop, go get your coffee warmed or crack open your Red Bull or whatever zany stuff you kids do these days. Okay, now read like your life depends on it! (I have no idea what that looks like lol).
The SEC, a commission to protect us nimble of mind and will, from our own lack of judgment. Ahhh, the whims of fancy, the fantastic fiat fortitudes of fortunes and fortresses. The god (little g) of the high towers frowning down at us from their golden committees and chairs of importance. How lowly we must all seem.
This crypto crowd needs a voice. The revolution needs a leader. I often comb over the CT and BT fun clans and love the intelligence, cool podcasts, brilliant witticisms and think "good, these guys have got it, I can stop worrying so much". Truth be told, really and truly no one "gets it".
We are mice within inches of getting nabbed by the household cat, readied to be the plaything of a well fed victor. That cat is the SEC.
Well, really all of the over-fed agencies of this damned government (I'm not cursing. They're going to Hell); a bloated monster that desperately needs lean fish and greens but childishly gluttons on oreos and the blood of free men. Printer go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr into infinity.
I know it is very likely that the passion with which I pretend to be a resurrected 3D hero from 2004 may not translate well when paid $0.3 in imaginary worthless cash, but there are a few people who really pay attention in Publish0x's reader base that are serious about crypto, and totally worth reaching. This is an appeal from mind and heart to the pure soul of cryptonians.
It's weird. Really, really weird. I am a reasonably level-headed person. I am not an anarchist. I am not a radical or revolutionary. But, as a person with very strong beliefs and ideals, I feel that line crossed, right before the incredible Hulk gets a twinge, and he really really really doesn't want to come out, but you ticked him off so it's going to happen. I can tell that Spidey got bit, but he really just does not want to have to spread sticky threads across the metropolis tonight.
Why can't this stuff work itself out a little better? Because this truly is a cause that needs a leader. I'm going to embody a little of what that looks like, but I have a strong suggestion; take this idea and make it yours.
A really cool example.
HEX has grown into an ideal, a cult of Hexicans, and I pray it doesn't reach it's apex when the first real cracks in the hope are discovered. It is really changing people's lives, and if there is a ponzi freak out moment, it could wreck a lot of people too. I honestly don't think that is the aim. But, Coinmarketcap, purchased by the giant Binance, obviously serves a purpose of being yet another one of these high towers, to make Binance king and to lower hand-picked items for which they don't wish to properly assert metrics. Richard Heart has pointed that out, and the Hexicans aren't going to have it. They've literally taken it on themselves to launch a suit against Coinmarketcap to require them to answer for their bias. Maybe they're completely full of crap, but there seems to be something there and I absolutely LOVE IT! I love their boldness. Again, I really have no clue how deep they're point is. Richard, if you're just griping but there's not much there, you've created a monster. But, if you are absolutely right and justified, my goodness bro, you have got the right kind of following, my friend.
Again, what do I know. I am the future of what crypto needs in the form of an almost has been. But, I'm the very best kind of has been; the kind that ages well and will forever be begging for a sequel. So, you want to adopt me into the family like the wise but somehow eternally youthful silent type that never shuts up. Can young grandpa rise a revolution from the hearts of cryptoland? Let's see.
Whether you are in Bolivia or Bermuda, the U.S. needs you. FinCen, FATF, SEC, FSOC, you name it, we've got it, and we're out of control. We don't like freedom and we don't deserve 40% of those precious, priceless, theologically sound words of doctrine in our founding father's pen. But you know what, it can live in the hearts and minds of free men and women of crypto.
RISE UP! Let your voice be heard. "We're mad as well and we're not going to take it anymore!" (Seriously? you don't know the reference? Goooooogle).
To the SEC:
We don't like being played. We don't like being played with.
We DO NOT believe you when you say you stand for clarity. You are the fog. We are wiping your residual moisture from our shades and about to deliver a death blow. WHY? Because we are the citizens of cryptonia, (the better choice is taken bc of that crap exchange that really should have been overseen by the SEC lololol). We are sick of your games.
I will be very honest with you. I don't give a flip about Ripple or XRP. Guess what else; SEC, you've MADE me care. If they are legit enough to still be alive and kicking despite the unforgivable harm you've caused to their market value, they deserve for all of us to have their backs.
Coinbase? Can't stand 'em. Fees suck (darn you for creating a talking point that I agree with Warren on!), always goes down right when it manipulates the market best, is a spam bot of listings now that it went public. All of the things that make crypto feel like your grandpapa's outdated bank trying to go online, but really unsure whether blue and white inspire confidence or are too bold for newer monitors. But, Coinbase provides a reasonably secure place to pretend someone owns their own coins and there are relatively few security complaints. The biggest pain is getting an account unlocked, getting an account approved, getting a bank or card linked up (bc of Obama era 'warnings' of fraud and simply not allowing people to choose what they wish to do with their linked bank accounts among other things). But, when Coinbase tells me that they have been over-talkative with the SEC and the SEC won't even take their calls, but they beg for a friendly open dialog, and in turn they get a subpoena, I 10000000% believe them.
Coinbase, when it comes to the lesser of 40 evils, I am on your side. THAT, is how much I HATE what my government is trying to do to stifle creativity, technology, choice, freedom, financial potential and forward thinking prosperity.
If it is YOUR preferences, YOUR winner/loser list, then everyone can sync up a bank account to a free trading account with Fidelity and 20 others and enjoy commission free stock trading, with dark pools and after hours. If I want to do it at the rate of my crypto trading, I just have to always have an extra $30K rolling around to keep in my account because... well no single good darned reason. But, take that same fellow who trusts the 3 oldest, longest lasting, most reliably performing cryptos, and no, it must be through a fund, or an ETF, or from a shadowy super-coder in Singapore.
I'm sick of it, and so should everybody else be, even if you feel it doesn't affect you.
You may think that volume, liquidity, anonymity don't affect you outside of the U.S., but it is our wing that expands the universe via puppet strings from the U.N. If you don't believe me, take 2 hours, sift through 40 exchanges. This is really important. Truly, if you do not believe, stop being lazy and go look for yourself! Look into their user terms. How many of them don't allow Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, Mainland China and... the United States? Out of those, how many of them state it is via the terms outlined by the United Nations? It is an international task force that technically shouldn't even know we exist. I am cutting myself off to worry less about being smart and more about getting you wired to tear stuff up and scream out your window: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm NOTNOTNOTNOTNOT going to take it any more!!!!!"
Where are you? Did you do it? Apologize to your neighbor and finish reading, already- lol.
The SEC is just the easiest, most public face of this terrible beast unleashed. Are there issues in crypto? Oh, heck yeah. And, if there was someone honest to go to about them, that sure would be swell. But, anyone who's promises of clarity, reason and protection somehow end up being a 3rd-time changing of the mind, 2 time changing of the guard, and in the name of clarity they refuse to put up or shut up about a single document or file, and never lean in towards finalizing terms of.........ANYTHING!!!!!... simply put; they cannot be trusted and they never will be the arm of the law to watch over us in servitude.
Any of you around when Coinbase went public? Did you notice their Twitter posts that they were going to go listing crazy and put up every crazy nobody penny stock zero knowledge PoS other definition acronym coin and see what sticks to the wall? Yeah, I lost all respect for them as a public company, until the SEC showed that the Winklevi now have a nemesis doppelganger in the Genslers. (Look it up; Gary's got a twin!).
What makes me madder than anything, is that if you put me in a room with Gary, give me 5 hours and we'd probably be pals, and he would agree with me. He is much, much smarter than me in a textbook manner, but I would win that argument head to head, no questions asked, and if the man has a soul he'd be pulling out the family scrap book, asking himself about his purpose in life, and Epstein didn't kill himself. NEXT!
Is it somehow possible that someone with a single good point is ever allowed within 30 miles of D.C.? I'm pretty sure anyone noble like Mr. Smith is poked in the neck with a date rape drug and hauled off to a dark room with 20 hookers before they ever make it to their first legitimate meeting with a lawmaker in D.C. Prove me freakin' wrong.
These attacks from agencies meant to protect us has GOT to stop. The fog is making it hard to see the future. You are blurring the perfect vision for what is to come and you suck at pretending to be noble.
We are crypto.
We are the people.
We are better than you.
A couple of us are much smarter than you. MIT does not intimidate us. For every Gary, we come loaded with 30 Michael Saylors and a few future Satoshi's for good measure (don't believe me? Get to know a few GEEQs and you'll believe there are still some brilliant brains in the room even if you don't always agree on major points).
Wouldn't it be swell if, in the cases where we actually did need some protection, you know the kind that I hear rumor that tax dollars are supposed to pay the salaries of, that there was an agency we could trust for such help?
Ripple? Seriously they're the threat? Coinbase? I mean seriously, Coinbase? They're the shadowy underbelly of criminal cryptography outsider pandemonia?
Seriously, reading the back and forth of Warren and Gensler I imagine I am dreaming. Is it Gensler's job to decide if fees suck on Coinbase? I thought the problem was that Bitcoin was going to brownout the entire world. Wait, I mean it is that MEV with Ethereum was going to cause all of our transactions to fail, because that's why we ALL want to build DEX on it day and night.
Seriously, if ETH doesn't fix their fees with 2.0, the market will respond in kind with L2 solutions, or ETH will die the natural death it probably deserves, which is not the legend I wish to see. In some weird way I really admire Vitalik and in other ways, he's kinda tanking it a bit. Give him a break, though, he's done more than most of us in half the time, and he still needs the kindness of a stranger to offer the poor boy's first double burger with cheese. It needs to happen, and soon.
Meanwhile, we need to be allowed to see this experiment through.
It is tactically the right thing to do.
We do not want Klaus to be the only person deciding what we are allowed to do with our lives. We want access to options in accounts around the world. It's the FREAKIN' internet. I should be able to load up a proxy and dance my browser anywhere around the world I please. What is the fun of cypher-funky-punking 24/7 from the comfort of my home, if the coolest place of freedom, the red, white, blue, is the crap that everyone is shying away from? Enforce this. Howey test that. Rules rules rules, print print print, lie lie lie lie lie. I am SICK OF IT and YOU should be too! What happens to the dollar dilutes every single thing you try to do, too!!!
Saving for your family's future? Don't count on it. Gary still has to decide if he wants Ripple to dance around naked in the street or whether to make Mister XRP shave his head in shame. They don't have any goal at all! WHO are they defending in this case??????
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOhhhhh pretty sure most of the listings on Coinbase are securities of the unregistered kind, and your drowning fiat garbage is at the highest risk of getting bogged in the mar of cloudy investigative treason. The second we flap our jaws, get ready to watch your assets tank. We are the SEC and you do not deserve the chance to use Google for research to decide on good investments. We must reduce the risk along with the list. Banbanbanbanban. What's good for the CCP must be good in the land of freedom. Not fascist yet? Just wait, we're working on it.
GET ANGRY!
MAD AS HELL!
It is time for a revolution and I promise you, a few hundred million accounts are ready to risk the banhammer on Twitter. Think Dorsey wants to lose the entire Crypto Twitter space in the course of a day? Then DO IT! GET MAD and TELL them how furious you are!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don't threaten lives, be gross, or honestly don't even be disrespectful. But, before they take this market from us laughing all the way to Satoshi's secret hide-out, make them abundantly terrified at what happens to their popularity when the real villagers and their real torches are mad as hell, and cannot take it any longer forthwith. I'm working on a more refined British version bc I'm pretty sure it sounds better with an accent.
Take this seriously, because greed filth and power rarely get tiresome for tyrants. We deserve to make choices, good ones and bad ones. These monarchs are through. Their chairs have been worn through and their rears are showing. They are drunk with power and they believe they speak for us. They do not.
It's time to end their reign.
Help me. Help us, the struggling Americans who are tired of being lumped in with all the ills of the sins of our fathers. We love crypto and we love freedom. We do not want to resemble the worst nature of Australia's out of control keepers and handlers. We love the landscape of The Lord of the Rings, and we hate the politics of the real Zealand. No one wants to try things the North Korean way. So, why are we letting them go there? STOP IT ALREADY.
SEC, FSOC and those who only come out of the legacy university woodwork to re-enforce Warren's idiocy, nonsensical rants, as if she stands as a beacon of hope for some poor lost souls somewhere, we're done with you. You have used your minutes. Your time has expired. We Are Done With You.
It is now time to proceed with innovation, great ideas, writers getting paid mad money to say smart things. Tokens that do cool stuff and sometimes fail miserably because they did it wrong. A few billion lost in one place earnestly, while a few gazillion are earned in efficiency and new systems somewhere else. Sorry slow old banker money, now there's something new and different. It's been going for 7 years working without a hitch. What have YOU done for me lately? Nothing?
Byyyeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Seriously people, at the end of the day the real democratization in crypto is right here, right now, and if you don't stand up and get seriously ripped loud and dangerously rowdy and loud, angry as hell, they are going to take everything cool we want to do and squish it with their $5000 devil shoes. lol I don't know it felt right.
Guys, if there's anything I do hope you take from this, it is that Gordon tends to have a strong and accurate instinct on what comes next in crypto. I still have my angry DM to random Binance support person saved in my Telegram, where I told them how disturbing I found it, that they wouldn't go on record to clarify that Binance had no intention of getting rid of its U.S. customers. This was 1 years before the ban. I know what I'm doing more often than not.
This government is hand in hand with the WEF and the CCP and it does not end well, and that end comes soon if you don't stand up and get flames-out-of-temples furious and say something.
If I say something, it will last for 20 seconds. If the few people I know like and retweet, it will last for 30 seconds. To make this go beyond a trend, break viral and reach legendary NFT-selling status, it needs the world of crypto. I think this is that Jerry McGuire memo moment, and you can be the cool ones- I'll be the nerd who grew a conscience.
Every day, let them know how out of line they are. They do not speak for us or anyone else.
We don't need clarity.
We know what the hell WE are doing here. Where did you get off deciding that MIT roots mean holier than thou Gary-manderings? lol. I'm picking on him because I'm too lazy to cover the gamut. Gary, in fact, isn't nearly as bad as many, but he's in the seat and his rear is showing, and there isn't any more hair to shed for me to poke at as a weakness. I don't think vanity is a region that will work for Warren or Gensler, so I must appeal to the fact that they are leading the way, and there are ZERO followers actually IN the crypto space, who they are protecting. The only people who agree with them, are proud to spout that they "own no crypto". Word to the wise, your endowments are poorly spent supporting people who's research only exists to protect people from good investments.
And on that note... I'm gonna go take a cold heroic shower and pretend this works, and we have just sparked the greatest people's movement the internet has ever seen... for now Crypto Gordon Freeman...out .
The Crypto "Getting Started" Kit
A fellow user on Publish0x left a comment on my article about newbies just entering crypto. My advise, essentially to not get rekt... don't believe everything you hear, do your research before pouring real money into something. Their comment was, essentially, they wish to take my advice, but how do they do research in crypto?
If you use the links attached to this article, you will be at least 70% better off than if you have mostly been trading from the view of Robinhood and Reddit groups (or telegram, or discord etc...). I cannot tell you that this will guarantee you "get it" and the lightbulb goes on, but it will point you in the right direction, and if the drive and determination are there, you are certainly less likely to get rekt.
I can't think of a better point. So, unless the storm outside prevents me from finishing this, I'm holding true to my word, to offer an entry-level recommendation, for what it means to "Research" before trading or investing.
This cannot, by definition, be short, but it is going to be very simple. I'm not going to throw anything clever into the mix, and it won't be separated into 30 parts. I'm sure at some time I will consider an actual course to help really walk people through; for now, I am providing a kickstart for beginners to not get rekt.
First, everything in crypto is divisive-lol. For every good coin or website, there is someone else who hates it. Let's chalk it up to human behavior. People are probably going to leave their opinions in comments as well, unless this doesn't rise in visibility. Coinmarketcap is one of those sites. It has been around a long time. It provides API's for websites to post accurate, live data about their coin projects, exchanges etc. It was recently purchased by CZ of Binance, and many have accused the acquisition serving to lift Binance to the top, and I concur, but at the end of the day, it gives you a one-stop for data you will want. You can search coins, view their timeline and historical data, look at how many exchanges a coin is listed on, find direct links to every project website etc.
Coingecko is often the site that people will recommend if they hate Coinmarketcap, largely for the same data. It is not bad to use multiple resources for the same research, in case different numbers are popping up.
For all of the words, comments, and general language that goes along with trading, Investopedia is a great site to help you get educated when people give advice, good or bad, and you have no clue what they just said. I use it especially when I'm tired, or when I said something I was certain was accurate, and I meet unexpected opposition, and need a reminder of what planet I'm on. In trade, wikipedia's usually help fill the gaps as well.
Investing.com is a site I mostly use for historical data on coins. It's layout has been useful to me for deeper analysis, comparing what happened on what day for one coin compared to another, etc.
Tradingview is for charting; this is where almost all of the industry gets their data on what coins are doing. If the pop-ups or layout are too confusing, you can always use the trading page, even if not signed up or logged in, on most large exchanges, and visualize the coin you are trading.
So now, let's break a few things down.
Two things you want to be familiar about: FA and TA.
FA is fundamental analysis, and it deals with being aware of what is happening in the world news, specific to the market, and the actual teams working on a coin project. These things affect the market, especially in the extreme long and short term. Often, a coin suddenly knee jerks, and people scramble to find out what happened. In those times, there's little any of us can do except to use a good system for trading or investing, but sometimes already keeping an eye on what is happening prevents us from missing a rug pull. This can be tricky, because it has become clear to most of us, that the media is perfectly willing to take a bribe to print what someone wants to pay for them to say. They are a regular source of FUD and FOMO and it is ridiculous. You will develop an instinct for how to react and process accordingly.
TA is technical analysis, and this stands for knowing the technical charts; learning to read the timeline on the data of a coin's performance, and using visualization tools, called indicators, to give you more data about what the coin has done in the past, in order to gain a better guess about what it is going to do now.
TA is where I need to offer more details. A lot of people "chart" coins online, for free, and a lot of people follow them for this purpose. People want a crystal ball from an "expert" that knows what comes next. Short answer: no one has a clue, but they have 70% better guesses than without the tools.
Many people will show you patterns, like a head and shoulders, a dead cat bounce, a golden cross, a death cross. When these things happen, everyone will be talking about them. Otherwise, again, it is totally up to interpretation. Don't be discouraged! With a valid system, you can make better decisions with this information.
You will want to learn about Doji candles, learn to use them, and only trade daily or weekly if you truly understand them. The absolute basics on a candle are that they are an brilliant visualization tool that give you SO much data, in the immediate timeline, it is super awesome. A candle can be green or red, often switching one to the other, and they leave a trail behind, giving you an ongoing history for how a coin is trending. The candle has a wick that faces up or down, depending on what is happening in the moment, and the direction of the wick identifies whether the current orders placed suggest the coin is about to move up or down based on what just happened. This is a starter, so go and learn about candles to see what this all means, but in the end, this should be the first point where you discover whether you think you may develop an instinct for this and learn to trust your gut on technicals.
Next, a lot of people talk about Fibonacci levels of support, setups etc. In truth, I think the most important thing a person can learn, is what I call the self fulfilling prophecy in trading. Often, things happen because everyone is watching the same thing. This translates into the trading "bots", or programs designed to trade automatically for the user, because everyone watches the technicals, and the market moves solely based on sentiment surrounding these factors. You will not run out of choices of someone to follow, who will show you what a coin is doing based on Fib. At the end of the day, the primary reason coins trade in predictable ways that fall within certain Fib levels, is because everyone is watching for them to do so, and they react accordingly; that is my affirmation from 4 years 12-15 hrs/day watching the charts.
Here's what I would like someone to know to use for their own personal technicals: Volume, StochRSI, MACD, Bollinger Bands, and if they wish VWAP. Because very few use VWAP, and because I do not like how this is visualized in Tradingview, I am not going to cover it here.
Volume is usually provided on charts pre-loaded, and will appear below the main window with candles. It will look like a red and green cityscape. This represents the amount of money spent on that asset within that given window of time. Red or green will tell you whether there was more buying or selling within that window. By the way, be it candles or volume, in some countries red is sell, green is buy, and in others it is the opposite. Just make sure you choose the one you're going to follow!
Volume matters, because it has trends that tend to occur as a result, and obviously if things are going red for a long time, you may want to wait until you know why everyone is selling before deciding to go in, but also, "buy the dip" by definition means that when that time is right, you want to buy when everyone else is selling. Buying tells you what, and how much, in a nutshell.
StochRSI stands for Stochastic Relative Strength Index, and provides a range from low to high, which is essentially telling you when a coin is overbought, or oversold. The idea is that when it is well over the logical range for a trend in selling or buying, it is likely to start reversing the trend in the other direction. I mostly find this helpful to compare against my other indicators, and that is an important point about all of this; indicators are like a painter's tools; each color matters, but it is the combination of colors together that paint a more accurate picture.
MACD stands for Moving Average Convergence Divergence, and what you need to know is that it has 4 important, simplified pieces of data that give 16 essential polar possibilities of what is going to happen, and it is often right. There is an oscillating waveform that trends on the value going up and down over a long period of time, and there are two lines that measure two different timelines. The goal in using MACD is to wait until the trend lines are going to cross one another at the lower position, and that this coincides with the negative dip oscillation. Once you see it, read up on it, you should get it. The real power of StochRSI and MACD is in using them together. If there is dissonance between the two, there is a reason for it.
Lastly, the Bollinger Bands. They sit directly on top of your candles, making it easy to add their details to your subconscious when you get comfortable with all of this. And by the way, don't ever get comfortable- lol.
Bollinger bands use data timelines for 3 major timelines about what the coin has done in the past, and overlays it right there. Very basic explanation; the price for a given asset tends to remain within the bands. If it breaks outside of that range, it is likely going to push hard, and quickly go beyond that point before snapping back into place. I wouldn't want to enter a position right when an asset is at the top of the BB, and I might want to wait to buy if it is about to pass through the bottom of the BB. Essentially, you wish to watch the action happening within the range, enter positions when it is done riding the bottom of the BB and getting ready to climb back up. Think of the bands like rubber bands. The more pressure against the lines, the more likely it will eventually pull back inside.
You have exponentially more powerful data about price movement when comparing these indicators to one another while watching the candles live.
Experts will disagree about a few hundred other indicators, and people will also argue whether one RSI is better than another. Again, this is the basics, and you may find a technique that works ten times better for yourself.
Trying to keep this the absolute survival's guide, you now have several sites to reference that I know you can benefit from, a little advice on what to do, an understanding that to avoid pitfalls you must pay attention to the world outside of pumps and crypto groups, and a "basics in TA" that will help you guess better at what is happening. When it comes to research, you at least know a set of tools to learn about to improve where you are.
Now, a little bit more about where most people go wrong. I think the basics are extremely important, because experts get rekt too. They get cocky, and forget the basics. When experts lose far more than they anticipate, it is because they break their own rules.
So, here's a fast-take on things you must know.
First, FUD, FOMO are real, and they get everyone. Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt is often manipulated, fake news to scare people into a certain action. FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out, is usually shilled news to cause someone to drop what they are doing and buybuybuy. Avoid these two instincts and you will be beter off 99% of the time. It sounds so obvious, but we are talking human nature, and it works because we are humans, and it also works, because our bots (I don't use one, but I have in the past) are programmed to react based on our own logic.
FUD and FOMO are manipulated largely in crypto, because of pump and dump groups. If you don't know the game, there is a good chance that the groups you have joined just to know about crypto, or follow a specific project, are in fact pump and dump groups and you may not be aware. In general, true p&d groups will tell you when a pump is to take place, and will even give you copy/paste data to shill to the outside world, so people will pile on top of market buy orders. This is too much to cover here, but understand that it is a very fast-paced Ponzi scheme. Most of crypto is not a Ponzi, but the super fast pumps absolutely are. The organizers are pre-programmed and ready to sell a massive profit, and they rely on the volume of the group to sell their profit target. Anyone a fraction of a second too slow is stuck at the top of a worthless asset. In the larger scheme, rarely, coins like Doge are prime for pumping even though they are a bigger deal with more legit lovers. Otherwise, if it is brand new and follows similar sentiment, the long term data suggests it will moon, and die a sudden death, and it is the beginner trader who is expected to provide the necessary volume for more advanced users to steal their cash in the form of instant volume.
There's so much more to share, but let me just add that if you are going to invest or trade with real money (you define what is a lot, not anyone else), do not do so without a plan. It may take you some time to truly know the plan that works best for you. Once you have determined that plan, do not stray from it. Looking back, I personally do not regret a single time that I escaped a trade with profit, even if I played it far too safe and missed a massive added gain. I do, however, regret every time I was a tiny bit too greedy and tried to hit the absolute top of a peak, and got stuck. Almost every single asset other than Bitcoin has gone from its highest highs to dropping 80-90%, never to return to previous highs. Every single YouTube "expert" advised for people to hold on to those positions and wait, because they were guaranteed to pump again. They are still -90% from entry since 2017. No one knows, and no one takes responsibility for people losing millions.
So, this is treacherous territory! It is worth the warnings and disclaimers.
The last point I want to make, and it is such a complex one, but I guarantee it is true, is that it is very, very, very hard to choose a winner based on merit. Some of the smartest looking/sounding projects are doing awful at market, and some of the dumbest projects that have loud screaming "don't go here" signs attached to their foreheads, pump over and over and over again. This has been a market that rewards stupidity with radical gains, and punishes the best laid plans. The truth, is right around the corner, in a week, a month, maybe slightly more, that is going to shift radically, and it is a matter of time before you wonder how the climate shifted so fast. Where is all the positivity and sense of family surrounding your favorite new coin? Why isn't anyone updating their Telegram group? Where'd all the money go? If I had not seen this happen 700 times before, and I mean that number literally, I would not speak with such confidence. The new line of coins are just the new wave of projects that eventually, some people are going to dump to chase the next thing. People often develop a gambler's mentality to chase another 100x gain to justify getting out of their current loss of 20-40%, and they aren't thinking about the odds they are going to make the same mistake. The best way to avoid all of this, is to simply stop chasing mad gains.
A little insight to my advanced process that I am working still today, since 2018; if you're here to trade, and want to avoid pitfalls, go for exponential growth, not pump and dumps. Establish a baseline for how often you want to trade, and how little profit you are willing to take to make the safest choices. Repeat this with circulation of the same funds, adding tiny profits, and you can double your money in tiny, safer bites with much higher likelihood than chasing the moon. For most people, though, trading is simply a bad idea with too many possibilities of loss, so if you want to earn from crypto but don't want the risk of trading, the experts will recommend to choose a top coin, and do something called DCA, or dollar cost averaging. You can do this with a little skill, or automate it from your app.
DCA is regularly, consistently buying at whatever the current price, and holding on to the asset. Over time, you get price discovery at a good, fair, average price. If it is something like Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, it is expected to continue to rise over time despite short term volatility. If we're all wrong, then there isn't a method that will save us. Do not resort to shorting with heavy leverage. If you get desperate, you're better to stop what you're doing than to use methods that are out there most people use to reverse a bad call. This is the gambler's addiction and it always leads in failure; not sometimes... always.
I hope that this is helpful, and for now, crypto Gordon Freeman... out.
Resources https://coinmarketcap.com/ https://www.coingecko.com/en https://www.investopedia.com/ https://www.investing.com/crypto/currency-pairs https://www.tradingview.com/chart/
NFT's - Don't Worry, I Get It. But, From The Napster Gen To NFT's... Do YOU Get It?
After making the decision to write this, knowing the cryptosphere fairly well, I immediately heard the flood of insults or "dewd, you just don't get it" comments. So, as I make a few points from perhaps a place of conservative wisdom, be aware that I get the other side of this discussion; truly I do.
Let me start on the foot of a recent example. The "Chahhhlie" YouTube video was just converted from a free internet asset that everyone has had available to them for years, did I mention for free?, into a one-time NFT, taken down off the channel, and sold for $700,000+.
I told you that "I get it", so let me use my own words to describe why someone with both intelligence and an extra $700K lying around would want to do something like this. Nostalgia holds value: a piece of internet history, an icon perhaps of a poignant simpler time, an historical placeholder towards a future built completely around technology, a generation raised online reflecting on the early days of YouTube as pioneering days before all of the current changes and what comes next we have yet even to see...
Am I getting anywhere?
Things hold tangible value in ways that matter. Even if things are no longer defined as physically-tangible. But ahhh the existentialist of internet-era, you see virtual games, virtual reality, 2D screen interaction, movies, binge-shows, we live more in the alternate, than in the 'real'. When mining advanced from the soul of World Of Warcraft, the gamers understood immediately. So did the CCP. When people started getting married on Second Life (gag lol), the internet made no excuses.
Truly, I understand. I understand to the degree that $100 is a pretty cool price to pay for a piece of internet history... that everyone can already have for free, anytime. Even $1000 for something really important. Trust me, if I were the sole owner of "gerse bermps" I'd be pretty stoked right now- lol!
But, please try to understand there are weaknesses in the rationale of $69M for Beeple collection, $700K for Charlie video.
The value shift is here. The future is in the now, but I'm not just watching the big shockers, I am mostly watching the market and what they are investing in. I love that plebs, if I should borrow from the vernacular, are putting their money on value-based appreciation. When they like someone's art, they spend a lot on it. This is, in most cases, digital art, virtual multi-media, sometimes gif/vid combo's.
As an artist and musician, I appreciate patronage as much as anyone could. In fact, I sell digital software used by studios large and small all over the world. So, what is my beef? Hey, I appreciate the freedoms each of us have to do as we please, and my advice is only advise those who need to hear it and take in the occasional whims of wisdom. In this case, I am very much concerned at the sheer magnitude of training, education, fiscal awareness that is lost on this generation. This is not an insult. It is a reality.
Many years ago, when all of the advertising from the tech sector was shifting towards making everything quicker, easier, zero effort, as it comes to transacting, a warning light went off in my head. Sure, I am in crypto, so I know we need to improve the ancient, let's say primitive architecture of the banking industry, speed things up, making them cheaper, widen their access to the world. But, there also needs to be an awareness that there is an intrinsic COST to things represented in money.
We, in crypto, spend so much time talking of the evils of fiat and centralized authority, that we forget that there is actually value in fiat. Yeah, I know, you can't see it, but I am wearing a tomato-proof mask and don't even care about dodging the fruit and vegetable lobby. You cannot tell me that the majority of the kids on Robinhood are buying their stonks and dogs with something other than digital representations of the dollars they have recorded in their bank ledgers. What else does RH accept other than bank-deposited fiat? For the few million newbies who helped pump the market up to a $63K Bitcoin, much of that was done in the PayPal app and funds transferred from PP to Binance.US.
"Yeah, but you can earn it, you can mine it". Yes, there are other ways, many other ways you can get your hands on crypto. But, for the other 99.999% of what is happening in reality, not in your gigachad-like roid-rage arguments on Reddit, fiat is buying crypto positions. Perhaps as the online gig-economy sites allow more and more crypto as payments, we will see more people living off of crypto, which sounds cool, except then I beg to ask what a person values more, their leveraging the value of their prized assets, or being able to prove a use case for crypto? Would you rather have more Doge and Bitcoin or prove that you can live off if it? Because there will always be more Doge and dollars, but only 21M BTC.
Do I digress?
I don't think so. The thing about NFT's, is that on an artistic level, I love that it is an avenue for artists to get discovered, and if a little is overpaid for raw talent, it wouldn't be the first time. But, I also think the level of irony is a little too hard to miss, so... why does everyone seem to miss it?
See, the actual underlying technology that got us all here is bit-torrenting, and the guys that got it here were Napster. They were cleverly spread across multiple places, using server strategies that place zero legal responsibility on their property, with files spread across a network in such a manner that no single individual anonymous account could be blamed for the blatant theft that was taking place. The fact that we advanced into a store of value similar to e-money is an improvement, and believe me, I'm not knocking any of it. I COME from the music industry. I KNOW the tyranny that people wanted to knock down. It wouldn't have been terrible for them to actually consider the artists and songwriters they accidentally targeted instead of the record labels, but that's another story. I tell you the truth, the real target should have been the distributors, and now they were the first in line to figure out translating ship-ables to the internet while the labels took years to catch up. Now, publishers and digital distribution is more powerful than the labels that were the target of the Nap-attack.
The underlying pirate-bay, bit-torrent "stick it to the man" nostalgia meant that if we dislike our nemesis enough, it is robinhood-like to take from the evil rich and distribute evenly among the lofty poor. The plebs. So, is it just a little 'bit' more than ironic that our actions got us a whole lotta stuff for free on the internet, and now we want to rebel against freemium economics by over-paying for that one thing we really appreciate?
I fear that the generation doing a lot of over-spending really, truly, sincerely, is directing their angst at something, but they truly don't understand what it is. But, usually the monster that deserves slaying is the one messaging for them to spend. I seem to find myself making similar warnings often. Maybe there's a bit of a vision of what comes next that comes from knowing a lot about what used to be. The internet as I see it right now, is in the middle of multiple seismic shifts that are going to self-correct in some massively unwanted ways.
We're going to get a lot of the regulation that many idiots in crypto have been begging for, and that will be the first phase of "dangit, wish I saw THAT one coming" woopsies that mean kyc for all wallets and a lot of "fund green initiative" crap to follow. I want free decentralized munny and I want it now!... with all of these rules from authoritative sources that dictate the justice-ish right ways to protect me having freedom... It doesn't work that way.
When the young start messaging the establishment that they are willing to over-pay for goods in games, goods in digital art, things that represent iconic micro-moments in history like videos or tweets, it is the signal to lay on thick the brainwashing marketing for all things NFT, and on the other side of it, we see a giga-fad in place of giga-chad, and the roid-like cool becomes the meme-like drool of a moment that is so classically cringe that unfortunately many are storing up value in things that, given a year or a decade, will make them feel incredibly pawned.
So, why is it that we are a people who want all of our albums, movies, videos and video game downloads instant, and free, but we want to give our life savings to that one cool thing we really want to show our appreciation for? Again, as an artist, I am moved to start placing all of my prints online and NFT-the-bidness out of 'em. Maybe I should. But, I wouldn't sell them for outrageous auction values beyond what I would have expected the real-world version that lands on someone's wall. I'd feel perfectly fine selling 1000 unique paintings online for $1000 each, but selling one $1000 painting for $1M would not sit well with me. That makes me strange, different. But, an equitable deal is only equitable if it is truly fair to both parties. My Mom might think all of my paintings are worth $1M, but she is the only one who should feel that way. And of course, mama's always right, so back off. But seriously, think of the most awesome mega-anthem epic song you love. Did you take it from the internet for free? Or perhaps even worse, buy it for $0.99 in the Apple store? Is it weird that Apple re-invented the single, and became the world's distributor for songs you already stole for free? And, the record label was the bad guy? Sorry, but for all of their sins, they are the ones that booked the studio, bailed the band out when the OD'd, paid $3M to shoot videos, bribe MTV when that was a thing, to book the gigs and pay the truck drivers and gear haulers and roadies. Apple just decided to negotiate licenses through Harry Fox Agency and labels and that's that.
I foresee the next iTunes right around the corner, and the next thing after NFT after that. My biggest concern is first, imaginary money can be made so easy, so effortless, that a person forgets an effort should be going in to the cost of acquisition. Working hard towards something is being trained away, dismissed as a thing of the past. You do realize the robots are coming not just for the jobs, but for the opportunities, for the art and individuality as well, right?
Money is defined as something of value because we all agree to use it to trade our label or other tangible values, for something else we want or need. You've been duped if you have learned so much about game theory, that you truly think money is just a game we play, and that everything is merely conceptual. Until we are given totally over to a UBI, and everyone suddenly realizes that without work or true investments, there is no more 'extra' imaginary money to buy NFT's with, money is a basis for value, either intellectual labor or physical. NFT's are a means to show patronage and to prove the validity of something famous, iconic or collectible, but it is a field that has very little basis for what that value should be.
The likelihood that the piece of digital art you spent $10,000 for is going to be worth the same as the top cryptocurrencies you may have paid with, as both appreciate side by side, is yet to be seen. But, it is a market that booms out of the fad of interest, not born out of the value of the actual underlying asset. There is a good chance that at the end of the day, you own the marker point on the imaginary ledger that says something is yours, but the only actual value you can leverage in that, is being able to tell people it is yours. A lot of people own stars named after them. There will always be more stars than people. Just a thought.
But, truly, the irony is that we have a strange way of showing appreciation, and a depreciating way of showing patronage. We want what we want, and digital allows us to get it for free, but if we like it enough for principled reasons, we would much rather radically overpay for that one thing, partly in thinking the ownership is what makes it a valuable asset, and if it appreciates later, someone else will want it for 10X the price. I truly do not think that the majority of the NFT market works that way, but the future will tell. Truly rare, momentous items will find value and hold some of it, but will it operate to the same concept of ownership as the Van Gogh's and Picasso's of the past? Perhaps. But, you gotta think there's only one V.G, or Picasso for a reason, right? The truly iconic rise to the top in their time and for decades to follow. Are we the kind of culture that will still reflect on times like this in another decade or two? Hard to say.
My only real point, is that I hope people will give in less to hysteria and trends, and focus more on genuine lasting value. I hope that as it pertains to money, perhaps some of the generosity from years of stealing music and movies can even out to where every once in a while, something placed on the blockchain becomes more like a real decentralization of the rights ownership we all actually need in the artist community. Right now, we have handed the music industry over to Spotify. We have handed the movie rental business over to Netflix (did you know that was given to us as a gift from Enron? Yeah, didn't think so). We have graced the advertising royalty over to Youtube. The list goes on, but you understand. We stuck it to the man, and then gladly paid him $5-10/month to serve us as we so desire. It is a weird, weird, weird, weird world that thinks money is imaginary, and that Napster was a successful revolt.
Invest well. Invest wisely.
Don't spend elaborately what you cannot afford to recover, and even if you reallllllly love someone's art, artists have learned to survive on long term practical audience-building for hundreds of years, and we'll keep going after the NFT craze crashes into place a bit more. There are lessons to learn from history, and one of them is this: there is a balance somewhere in between wanting everything for free and paying a decent price for something of returning value. Reel in the extremes and we will all get more of what we are after.
And on those grandpa-like morsels of mortality, Gordon Freeman, part crypto icon, part unknown warrior for economic good, for now... out.
Bitcoin And El Salvador: My Perspective On The Arguments Of Decentralization
Bitcoin Maximalism... Bitcoin Maxi's... Toxic Bitcoin Maxi's...
Boy oh Boy it's been a salty week in crypto. But, it's okay. Sometimes when communities dig in, express their passionate positions on ponderings of particular points (px5), we get to see the real eye-openers that I believe help introduce new people to crypto, but equally as important, to help people form their real, genuine perspective about crypto.
Sure, for years, there have been disputes about whether to HODL or trade, whether to solely "stack sats" or diversify into numerous alt projects, speculations who the real Satoshi is, whether Ethereum is "the Bitcoin killer" or even the world supercomputer. All of these things will likely surface time and time again. I love 'em. They are a part of our culture. They get burned into the subconscious of true cryptonians.
But here's the thing: communities are becoming increasingly divided, turned into camps, extreme "doubling-down"isms that pit tribal groups against one another, where it would seem logical for cooler heads to prevail. Similarly, the crypto extremist groups will place those who can see the space for its diverse points of view, into a camp of their own, the "sitting on the fence" crowd. It's hard to form alliances when it becomes intimidating for the online, social process of "being" crypto, not just experiencing the culture surrounding, to mean dancing around cancel culture, "if you're not with us, you're against us" and many developing phenomena in the space.
Then, there are the true underlying issues that divide our walk with crypto, and though Gordon has spoken to these things since he first decided to "go all in" on this crypto journey, we are now seeing the entirety of the benefits and risks play out on a global stage. Crypto in the hands of private collectors, private wallets, protecting your own keys, silently stacking, celebrating the option to opt out of centralized, traditional banking, cheering each other on through the highs and lows of an entirely new asset class. Now, we have governments increasingly weighing in, trying to define us, to protect the investor, to classify coins, securities, commodities, the monthly China ban-hammerings, the FED weighing in, reports now coming in regarding the state of statehood, CBDC's defining central banking's stablecoins, deepening of strict enforcement on tax codes in desperate shifts towards higher grabs for power.
What are these things going to do to the actual crypto market? Where does this go regarding our freedoms to trade, think, store, buy, sell, and exercise privacy as a God-given right?
All of these things are good, in a sense, because they expose the true nature of our governments, nation by nation, and to a greater degree at the global level. We can see the spread of those governments who may truly recognize the benefits of crypto to the longevity of their future, potential growth in wealth and power, surprisingly, possibly even the benefits to their citizens, and in contrast the super-powers that are always worried about something that can limit their grip on the flow of wealth outside of the tightly confined nature of organized finance.
In essence, we see the world's governments starting to form their own cult-like camps, pitting the voices of freedom or hope, against the big-brother-like clingings of mongers for the old ways of doing things; grasping for more control, more regulation, more surveillance, more data mining of citizens.
Here we are, at the precipice of arguments as old as time, and the merging of new technologies that can both benefit the old regime, and break our ties completely, in a move towards new frontiers. The remarkable thing, is that we are likely going to see both of these take effect in some form of ironic symbiosis.
All of this brings us around to the topic of decentralization.
It is my personal position, that there is no such thing as decentralization, but in every coin and token designed to take some advantage of blockchain technology, there is a measure of programmed decentralization designed to benefit us in ways that break from the old, replacing it with security, privacy, efficiency, validity and immutability.
The working-model of decentralization is in a ledger shared across a network, using PoW, PoS, PoH and a myriad of evolving techniques to verify and validate that a transaction is what it is, and does what it is designed to do. Under those conditions, we ideally have a basic structure that eliminates the middle man, which is crucial in recognizing both the threat to bankers, insurance mongers and governments, and also an entire new set of challenges in distinguishing exactly who is involved in such a network.
Let's focus on Bitcoin, because it is the top dog at the center of current debate. You can tell what centralized power fears the most, when you see what enemy they focus on the most. In this case, Bitcoin is dragged through the mud over energy use, climate change debacles, ransomware, Chinese involvement and market manipulation, and now the potential freedom alliances of nation-states. In particular, the announcement that Bitcoin has now passed in law, to become legal tender in El Salvador, much to the dismay of foreign powers and angry paid mercenary journalists who wouldn't know how to obtain a scoop if their lives or livelihoods depended on it.
Bitcoin is designed to be peer to peer, protected by a blockchain that generates algorithms to be solved in order to win blocks mined for minting coins. Difficulty is part of Bitcoin's safety protocol, and increasing this is part of keeping things decentralized in an organized fashion. All elements, as simplistic as they are, are remarkably well thought out, and the pacing of such requirements means that in addition to being aware of energy use, the creator also knew it would be wise to buy the time needed to increase energy solutions for securing the future network difficulties.
El Salvador has citizens who need a direct, fast payment system with less fiat control and built-in inflation. Since there is no property tax and the use of Bitcoin in El Salvador will not incur capital gains taxes for transacting in Bitcoin, there is no incentive to hide one's use of the cryptocurrency in commerce. The government of El Salvador is recognizing the trend of corporations hedging against the devaluation of the dollar by converting incoming profits into Bitcoin, borrowing to obtain more Bitcoin, and counting on an 11+ year record of extreme growth in value. By adding this concept to their own reserves, requirements for citizenship, and levying their natural power resources like freakin' volcanoes for goodness sake, El Salvador seems to be the country taking the first step towards extreme national confidence in Satoshi-technology. It is bold, and since none of us know the future any better than to observe the past, we cannot be certain of anything, even in our certainty of Bitcoin's resilience. Never underestimate the powers of global governance, Klaus and the WEF, the underminings from the IMF, the world-liness of the World Bank, or the B.S. of the BIS. They are power hungry, and have devised a system to always control the flow of wealth in their direction.
The debate over where the present of crypto, becomes the future of crypto, is now evenly divided among the powers that wish to control it, regulate, limit access, and suppress the reach of this movement, and those siding on embracing the qualities found in the asset class and the potential wealth-stability that can result. But, many are fearful that these alliances, as good as they initially sound, may be steeped in yet another form of centralization.
A country is a country, whether it is big or small, strong or weak, wealthy or poor. Bitcoin has never been viewed as an element to be adopted by countries, but largely as a means to succeed beyond the limitations of government. What does it mean when the government itself, can become the catalyst to bring the mass adoption we've all waited for, for over 10 years now?
There are endless angles from which to view this, but to prevent the myriad tangents, let me just say, that understanding the difference between centralization and decentralization requires getting very specific. To the same degree that democratic voting could represent a population who all remain completely individualistic in their singular choices for who to vote for, but usually instead we have huge clusters joined together in movements, often manipulated to choose one extreme over another. Similarly, while a network can be incredibly diverse, lacking any centralization, where every person running a node, and everyone with a mining operation is a stranger unto themselves, with no motivation other than to contribute or get paid. But, in truth we know that the network, though spread across thousands of processors, does tend to centralize because individual mining is too difficult to compete against large multi-million dollar operations. The necessity speaks to joining mining pools, adding power to centralized operations, moving to centralized locations with the best weather, cheapest energy, and for long we've all had our eyes on Chinese govt. manipulation of mining markets, as we enter yet another ban.
Often, people focus on the actual creators, developers of a token project, as being too centralized in their control of that project, but often this centralization from a team is required, in order to properly implement a system of governance and protections against unwanted centralization in the system. One could probably see, that in many ways a great measure of centralization is exactly what is needed, in order to provide decentralization.
So, to be fair and accurate, what we want the most out of crypto decentralization, is the ability to remove the singular power from overseeing processed fees via a third party, we do not want to have a bottleneck of human-controlled permissions, we do not want a network that can be solely owned by a single dictator in a single country, and it would be unfeasible for enough computing power to override the network and outperform the minority.
What about countries, then? Well, the truth is that we are going to have the leaders of countries, perhaps entire governances, weighing in with rules and regulations as much as true believers do not want this. The question is how long this network can remain untainted by government interests, as the economies of the world go through some rather negative transitions.
The economy outside of crypto is becoming more tightly controlled, with technological mergers, more belief in big government, higher taxation, centralized power. The question, is whether enough governments take a smart angle to their strategy for future proofing some kind of value in reserves. Gold will continue to be one option used by the superpowers, but it is likely going to struggle to compete with the technological gold reserve in an era where an entire generation now understands the new standard and has no issue dismissing the "it isn't real, so why does anyone believe in it" mentality. We've arrived at a digital age that is either transforming into something even more advanced, or will remain for a century beyond us. The next decade will likely define whether we continue in what I believe is a positive response to the centralization question, which is for small countries, then medium sized, larger and largest all consider valuations of reserves based in Bitcoin. It is smart on so many levels, and some even in more tangible terms.
I will surely return to this topic and especially specific to El Salvador. Being the first, they certainly deserve repeat reflections, and over time we will see whether the bold new moves are still rewarding, or if a new, negative political force shows its true colors later on. For now, there is enough to unify us, that we truly should be centralized, in embracing the political support for decentralized money reserves. If we build true allies, and the legitimization perhaps even reduces some of the true governmental sources for the very money laundering and illicit use that so concerns regulators, then we can see a gradual purification of an otherwise process of greed and fear mongering, towards building true, useful values that can be spread across the populations that need it the most.
And on that note, for now, crypto Gordon Freeman... out.
@BitcoinGordon2