You are the Elites: Financial Newsletter review and how you are secretly smarter than veterans + My outrageous prediction and Why Bitcoin will never be P2P Electronic Cash

in #cryptocurrency7 years ago

If you had followed me during my 164 days on steemit you should know that I'm not too kind to Bitcoin. I think of it as a prototype pumped up as the real deal. Bitcoin doesn't have the basic fundamentals to become Peer to Peer Electronic Cash on a massive scale. If the entire population of the world was the population was the population of Singapore (5.6 million), Bitcoin would do fine. I've spoken favorably about Bitcoin Cash. But I still don't believe it's the real deal either.

There are many people who regularly brings up the fact that the record making blockchain that can be scaled to do 100,000 Tx/s which is pretty amazing considering VISA is capped at 56,000. But please remember that all the posts and upvotes are transactions in the STEEM blockchain. We are only approaching 50k active users and we currently clock about a million Tx each day (which is higher than BTC's entire capacity.) and that's less than 0.1% of the current capacity. Check this site which should give you some really good insight: http://www.blocktivity.info/

With Smart Media Tokens and hundreds of millions of users a good portion of the capacity of the STEEM blockchain will be occupied. But that's not even the main point. I'll let the Litecoin inventor speak his mind. 

 “The one major thing missing from Bitcoin and Litecoin being good money is fungibility”“So if I, lets say bought like 10 Bitcoins on an exchange and deposit it to my wallet and want to pay someone for coffee or for whatever right, I want pay someone back $5 for lunch. If I send him $5 from those 10 Bitcoins then he knows that I have 10 Bitcoins or 10 thousand dollars in my wallet and he can track where that money came from and where I spend it next”“It seems kind of silly that if I pay him $5 all of a sudden he has access to all my information about how much money I have, where I’m storing it, how I’m using it, and he can track where that money came from and where I spend it next.”“Its not about buying drugs, it’s about when you are using money, you don’t want to have to decide which one of the coins to spend due to it having some history”“It’s like if you take out your wallet to pay someone and you have to decide which one of the $20 dollar bills to use because one of the $20 bills is tied to more private information you don’t want anyone to know about.”  

STEEM has the exact same problem but little bit more magnified. You can use a bunch of addresses with BTC, LTC or even BCH. But that's a real pain with STEEM and it's even highly discouraged. PIVX and their excellent marketing team leveraged on this.

It's pretty clever and Snappy is just pumping PIVX. But it's also genuinely true. Without fungibility, nothing is cash. Without a random person can data-mine and track and predict all or at least most of your spending habits, activities and how your brain tick and this could be used for criminal activities, blackmail or just to empty you digital wallets by selling you stuff at your most rationally vulnerable moments.

This relic with $25 Tx which wouldn't confirm for hours and $100+ Tx than confirm in the next 10 mins pales in comparison to 1.3 second Tx of Dash/PIVX that's done for cents. Practically anything on the top cryptos by marketcap is better. I'm currently holding some Dogecoin with almost 80% profits and this meme based coin is working better than Bitcoin. 

But today after the big crash few days ago, I was seeing BTC being much stagnant while Alt-coins killing it. BAT and Monaco which I held through the crash did really well for me and I was taking a look at things to see if my predictions are getting close to become a reality. I've made a bunch of predictions on this site. Many except 1 came true.

  • Hshare, Bytom, Komodo,SONM quadrupled.
  • BCH went over $1000 (I made the claim on early August)
  • I was screaming about WTC while it was 10 times cheaper and I predict minimum $100 before next christmas.
  • I was big on Substratum and Sia
  • I was screaming about MaidSafe and NEM 
  • NEO did really well for me too.
  • I was involved in TRON ICO on Binance and China happened. So no gains on that.

I didn't expect the current rally in Bitcoin. If fundamentals didn't change it wouldn't stabilize over $5000. Some fundamentals changed but still..... 20K happened. So at least I was halfway wrong about that. So I did more research this time. I researched about the big money involved. Big whale investors and the money from traditional stock investors. I've spent hours reading massive amounts of free material made available by financial newsletters that even sell their subscriptions at over $15,000 after massive discounts. Their crypto subscriptions are not even included in these bundled subscriptions.

Most cryptocurrency newsletters go for prices around $3000 and thousands of people buy them. Personally I started my crypto investments with less than $1000 which was all of my liquid assets at the time. I've followed many of these writers who talk about cryptos and I've listened to podcasts and even watched some promotional materials. Some time ago I attended a live webinar from Teeka Tiwari and left highly disappointed. 

It made me realize how many things we take for granted on steemit.

I even got my hands on a bunch of recommendations from Palm Beach Confidential and it wasn't really a big deal. Just spending some time on steemit and using coinmarketcap should easily cover up half the work presented in PBC. Just think about that. Half the work of a high end financial newsletter through simple social media interactions that might acutaly even end up making you few dollars.

The material I explored were from people I truly respect. But my conclusion was that no matter how great they are with stocks, bonds, real estate and all of the traditional investments, they are just a bunch of jackasses when it comes to the crypto-sphere. One newsletter writer/publisher with thousands of dollars worth newsletters behind him was advising that a person should keep 30-70% of their portfolio in Bitcoin. That's one of the stupidest crypto-investment advises I've ever heard of. The biggest and weakest crypto with limited percentage gains should be 70% of the portfolio!!! All the while we have sleek monsters like Dash:

Now here is the part you might miss. People who buy the newsletter are expected to make massive gains to coverup $3000 subscription with as little as 30% of a crypto portfolio and these people are recommending Buy & Hold.

That's a lot of money. That's also a huge lot of experienced investors. In their own words, Bitcoin is the "Reserve Currency"s and a "Store of Value". I consider the "Store of Value" argument to be something utterly senseless and that's a whole different post.

The main point is that these experienced idiots aren't even betting big on Ethereum. It's still not safe enough for them. Most of their so called "Insider Knowledge" can be picked up from Twatter and Reddit and some look around their website and maybe the whitepaper. They also talk about some great technical indicators they are using and almost makes it look like magic. Allow me to give you a list of these technicals and a "Secret Website" which allow you to track most of these technical indicators regarding your cryptocurrency investments.

Drumroll.........................................

  • MACD
  • RSI
  • Google Trends

https://www.tradingview.com

Ok we are done. That's it. That's really it.......

If I were a busy person I'd have payed $199 for any one of these "High End" Financial Newsletters. That's it. There were many including me who loved BCH and though it would reach great heights. Teeka Tiwari had a great advise. Sell your Bitcoin Cash. Then he had another great advise. Buy Bitcoin Cash at $1500 because it really didn't have much going at the beginning and now it's picking up bull energy YADAYADAYADA............... while practically every damn Analyst on steemit was bullish on BCH since it was  around $300. That's 5 times better performance than a $3000 newsletter

All you had to do was be on steemit making few bucks.

I know these newsletters and the experienced idiots who run them must have made a lot of money and saved a lot of time for many people. But actually learning about cryptocurrency and blockchain for half an year and being on steemit has put me way above those big investors.

We are talking about all sorts of coins and we are discussing blockchain technology and having debates on scalability and we are reviewing ICOs. Reading all the material for hours convinced me of one thing. We are Elites. We really are. These people are only beginning to realize the worth of Bitcoin but to me and many more, Bitcoin is already a relic. The difference in mindset is like the difference between an average person from a super wealthy country like Singapore, Dubai (UAE), Switzerland and a wealthy person from Zimbabwe or Congo or North Korea. 

What all of this means is that the Alt-coins is the new Bitcoin. Living in our elite ivory tower we might not have noticed this. But The people with both money and experience have only jumped onto the Bitcoin bandwagon and they don't even understand the fundamentals or the tech. Surprisingly, You are probably already more informed about Cryptocurrencies than these newsletter writers. One prominent figure called for a million dollar BTC (21 Trillion USD marketcap). There is also that other Expert who's about to eat his dick on live censored television.

Among all this figures, highschool dropout me goes on record with the following claim:

Bitcoin will reach sub $500 price before the end of 2020.

I've been accused of making posts that are too long. So I'll make another post on the rise of the Alt-coins later. But until then you might be able to figure out where I'd be going with these posts.

If you have outrageous predictions like mine, You are welcome to try the comment section. 

Sort:  

I'm also of the same mindset about BTC.
Let me ask you a question:
What is the value of BTC that is coming from it's age and large miner network? If you reply "nothing" then real BTC value is zero.

The craze comes from newbies' only knowing BTC and I'm sorry to say that it will continue that way for a while more.

I especially oppose to the requirement to buy into BTC to get to an Alt coin. Wtf is that?

Despite the December craze and the crowd that is coming into exchanges everyday, we are still not even in early adapter phase. So expect more of the December craze in the coming times and I regret to say but they will all buy BTC and we will see outrageous numbers for BTC which will in turn pull Alt prices up just like it happened in these past few weeks.

The majority of worlds people will never understand cryptos. Too complicated for them. Any company that will simplify the use of cryptos will make a lot of money.

However, I don't agree with you on the final value of BTC. It will never be good for p2p txs, yes. But in a world where cryptos are money, it will be used between governments. For their settlements.

I'm not sure who is behind all this. And I'm ready to discover one morning that all cryptos have been wiped off. Why? Well simply because this planet is full of shit because of all the shit people in it. But if cryptos live, I promise you, you will all (anyone who's reading this) be very rich before 2023. (Unless you just read crypto pages with no intention of buying some.)

But in a world where cryptos are money, it will be used between governments. For their settlements.

That's Ripple(XRP) made by bankers for bankers and many central banks all over the world are on-board.

Banks are not governments though.
I guess we will live and see.

I think you are on the money for most part, going from old post I respect and think highly of most of your views. Another thing I totally agree with you is the amount of experts who claimed you should have 70% of portfolio in BTC, most of these guys were vocal about this theory when BTC had that sudden rise from around 5k to 18k in a span of 2 months. But then 10 days back Alt coins started blooming and giving much higher returns than BTC and I don't see anything from them on that. I have always wondered how is BTC going to p2p ever if the value is going up so high and if its so volatile. I'm no expert have only been into crypto for 6 months so almost a noob, but I still don't believe we will have BTC at 5k. I'm thinking about BTC more like Gold and in cryptosphere it will be the USD & Gold combined together - The standard against which everything is measured. After 2020, when this stablizes a bit, I'm guessing there could be multiple p2p coins in future like say LTC or VTC ( just some random examples) which will be used for regular transactions but you would keep most of your stash in BTC and convert to these for transaction purposes. BTC will be store of value and these coins will be medium of exchange and it should be possible to seamlessly swap coins using whatever wallet you use on your phone by then. These coins will be like Visa, Mastercard , Amex of today. Value of BTC will still be high but volatility and rate of growth against USD should slow down a bit for people to actually spend it. Otherwise you might as well keep holding as no one wants to look back and realize then spent what is $500 today on a $10 pizza a few months back! Liked reading this one like most of your posts, will look forward to comments as well

Cryptocurrency are digital assets. By definition they have no intrinsic value. The only value a Cryptocurrency has is it's use. To elaborate more, I'd say it's about

Utility
Usability
Scalability

Please take a look at Bitshares and their smart assets. It should solve practically everything you expect BTC to solve. I've seen https://nubits.com/ which is a stable currency. If you need a store of value, just buy Gold/Silver/Platinum etc. Bitshares have the crypto version of Gold and Silver. These smart assets are backed by BTS to hold the value of the physical counterpart.
https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bitshares-asset-exchange/

I'm guessing there could be multiple p2p coins

Currently I have high hopes for Dash, NEM, PIVX and with more research I've also come to love Verge.

I have been hearing a lot about Bitshares, started looking them up with Bittrex decided to delist it a few months ago. It clearly threatens current order as you said. However don't you feel - Bitcoin has too much of a lead to really get disrupted in next 4-5 years? But after reading your thoughts on Bitshares, I'm beginning to rethink my current understanding. BTC is concentrated mainly in hands of some early adopters and silicon valley VCs and investors who understood the potential. From what I heard huge majority of BTC is locked up with folks who will never trade it. Now when old world money gets in they will be at disadvantage in this new world of money, so they should back something like Bitshares early to compete. Thanks for replying, I'm certainly going to do more research into Bitshares

That's one thing I touched up in the post.

The people with both money and experience have only jumped onto the Bitcoin bandwagon and they don't even understand the fundamentals or the tech.

For one these guys are behind the curve. The tech is evolving fast. Alt-coins are the new Bitcoin. ICOs are already several times the VC market. 2018 will be an year of Alt-coins. Just Imagine what Ethereum achieved so far stating from scratch. @haejin claims BTS will go to $342. I'm pretty sure $120 will come easy. That's X200 gains.

BTS can handle the volume of NASDAQ. That's a lot.

Where do you think NEM can go this year?

I'd say at worst $4-5
Cryptos are very volatile and many things happen in an year. NEM has only started showing its colors and It's pretty big in Japan. You know another something that was big in Japan: ADA
NEM has a serious chance at overtaking ETH but I'm not too sure it'll happen next year.

If it gets equal to ETH it would mean $8 NEM with todays values.

And it could happen. $4-5 was the worst case scenario.

4

Without a random person can data-mine and track and predict all or at least most of your spending habits, activities and how your brain tick and this could be used for criminal activities, blackmail or just to empty you digital wallets by selling you stuff at your most rationally vulnerable moments

Never thought about this! Infact this is true and correct. The silkroute incident could have been this. ie the officals said they were able to track ToR end points but this might have been the method they used along with other things. The ability to track itself kills the purpose of the bitcoin blockchain if datamining can be done it becomes a more severe privacy nightmare than facebook!

Did you notice the price hike for zcoin btw ?

I watched the documentary that was narrated by Keanu Reeves. The arrest seemed totally illegitimate and many security experts called the government explanations horseshit. The first thing I always notice is the flaws of a system. So data-mining was pretty much the first thing that came to my mind.

I did notice Zcoin as I check coinmarketcap several times a day. I still have higher hopes for zPIV in PIVX. NEM finally made some moves some time ago and so did Komodo. So PIVX should soon make some big moves.

I am going to make multiple comments here as I have many things to discuss.

There are many people who regularly brings up the fact that the record making blockchain that can be scaled to do 100,000 Tx/s

This brings a simple question to my mind .... is there a means to performance test the blockchain while its in the testnet or so ?

I don't know for sure. Waves platform did something to test their network. IOTA had a mess. So I think you should be able to do some testing by spamming the blockchain with Tx.

@vimukthi,

Great message. I hope everyone hears it.

Price is what you pay, value is what you get.

But people seem to equate the two!

Namaste, my friend.

JaiChai

P.S.

Seriously? I dropped out too (when I ran away from home at age ~14).

I'm still living with my parents.

But you're doing great.
You obviously study a lot on something that will make us all very wealthy in 3 years. I'm already in a good position but I'm lacking motivation.

Still I have massive lots to learn. I still don't even consider myself an expert or anyone who is good enough to give good advise. I have a very self-critical obsessive perfectionism to my personality.

I understood that when you did not give me your email address. :)

I'm probably the most ignorant person when it comes to money that you will ever meet, so I'm not sure what you're saying here. I understand that Bitcoin is most likely a bubble, especially if you compare it to other crytos. That makes sense.

This is certainly the time to be playing. As cryptos gain credibility, there will be wild swings. If they get too powerful, however, I wouldn't be surprised if the government outlawed all cryptocurrencies except for one: a government mandated one administered by a central authority. If they can confiscate the people's gold and then eliminate the gold standard completely, they can certainly stop this "peoples" money blockchain party quite easily at some point.

Something else I understand is that when one bubble deflates, money leaves the bubble. It doesn't disappear. When investors finally pull the plug on bitcoin, where do you think that money is going to go? Will it go into other cryptos, gold or back into fiat and the stock market? I understand you can't possibly know for sure, but you seem like the best educated guesser I know (except maybe @vieira). I'd like your opinion.

I plan to Steem on, however that's only because I love to write and have a different agenda than simple acquisition. If I get rich, great. If not, meh!

Stick around steemit and you'll eventually get smart. https://mises.org/wire is the best free site to learn economics. It's an amazing place. Pleae check it out.

Governments can't really ban cryptos. If they do, the war on drugs will be considered a major success. They can only make things harder for crypto. IMO most money leaving Bitcoin will go to Alts and spending sprees.

There are people expecting $100 STEEM in 3 years and I agree. Not a bad plan to stick with steemit. Just remember to make your exit when something better pops up. For Bitcoin, it was Dash. For ETH it's EOS. For STEEM, it's still not made yet.

Thanks for the info. I'll keep watching.

Hi my friend,

I have nominated you for the B&W photo challenge. I am not sorry :-) LOL. As I cannot reach you through a chat, I am abusing your newest article (about which I can't say anything, because I'm a total loser with numbers, currencies and estimates - but as you got many votes it must be worth a lot)

goto: https://steemit.com/sevendaybnwchallenge/@erh.germany/seven-day-b-and-w-challenge-day-2

Cheers!

First time I read the rules. I'll try something. Look at all the excitement I'm radiating. It's all thanks to you.

Seriously, the person in the picture is practically a God of War. He takes down enemies who take down armies only using a training weapon to fight them...... multiple times. One of my favorite fictional characters ever. (Most people don't like him though....... for the exact reasons that makes me like him.)

always a rebel, you are :-) what's the name of this character? Never heard of him.

Thanks for taking the challenge!

Personally I do not buy any financial newsletter, I only invest according to my experience and what I think will happen, maybe I do not earn as much as many others, but my profit is significant, I have managed to multiply my initial capital exponentially, there are people who really are making hundreds of thousands of dollars, or millions with this, for now I have not reached that, my growth is slow but I find it better than investing in anything else.

That's the way to go. Things you learn by yourself never leaves you. With each day you'll become a better trader. If you are already rich, then these newsletters can be used to save you a lot of time. Putting less than 10% of your investment portfolio for a newsletter is OK IMO. But it'll slow your learning speed.

I'd be more excited if PIVX hadn't mentioned Milton Friedman in their video. The guy caused problems over four decades that we're still dealing with today.

John Maynard Keynes has caused more destruction. The entire inflation based monetary system was his fault. Most things wrong with modern economics could be traced to Keynes. Milton Friedman was only an Austrian sellout; A cheap version of Ludwig von Misess

Go for Dash which PIVX ripped off from. Dash uses trustless mixing instead of the trusted Zerocoin setup. I've written a bit about them here.

When you say "inflation based monetary system", do you mean inflation targeting frameworks (where a central bank would target 2-3% inflation, for example)?

Mises typically said the polar opposite to whatever Marx said, which means that whenever Marx gave a half-trugh, Mises gave an opposite half truth. For example, Marx conflated land with capital to attack capital and Austrians conflated land with capital to defend capital. Neither side should have conflated them.

My only question is whena re we gonna see more ability to buy alt-coins with fiat? Once that starts happening, and coinbase already sort of does this(possibly bitshares too but I havent been able to use open ledger for fiat yet) but really just getting money into the space is difficult, and seems to be getting more difficult with banks starting to limit people's ability to use exchanges. Any thoughts on that?

I think Waves was trying fiat gateways and CEX.io allows you to deposit USD, EUR, GBP with your credit/debit cards. There is also the spread of ATMs and http://uphold.com/ which would be a major force in getting fiat into cryptocurrencies. Also there are things like localbitcoins and dashous. People could also ask people to pay them in cyptos.

I think the same methods would be utilized more and some banks/brokers will allow few major crypto purchases. People still have cash and they can work for crypto payments and HODL and spend the fiat they have left. So I'm not really worried. Banks will only make things harder and slower.

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