The last 12 months have been a circus for crypto. So many bad actors. So much fraud. A million get-rich-quick schemes and almost no opportunities.
Since 2013 I’ve been obsessed with this topic. I even got to work with some of the big crypto companies via my banking job.
Here are the controversial things about crypto no one talks about.
98.99999% of crypto is a scam
No one wants to admit this.
If you say this too loud the crypto bros will come after you with a pitchfork. Ahhh well…they’ll come for me, I guess.
Outside of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana — almost every other crypto is either a scam or bet on some lottery idea that’ll likely never be successful.
When I tell family to look at Bitcoin/Ethereum/Solana they almost always come back a few weeks later and say, “Great tip, Tim. I bought Dogecoin.”
I’m like WTF! That’s what the internet does. It takes the uneducated and puts their fragile minds through a blender so by the end they’re accidentally betting on some dog coin and thinking they’ll get rich. Sad.
You don’t need to be a good investor to make money in crypto. You need to be good at focusing on the boring opportunities and being skeptical of pretty much every crypto.
Just take a look at BONX right now. People are getting scammed by this new dog coin and refuse to admit it. Every year there’s one.
Takeaway: research the top 10 coins (by market cap) only. Everything else is a bear trap waiting for you to step on it.
Bitcoin is about to hit $100,0000
I’m gonna piss off a lot of skeptics, particularly the skeptics from the dot com bubble who said tech and websites were all scams. LOL.
In the next few months, Wall Street will have approval from the regulator (SEC) to sell Bitcoin and Ethereum to their clients. Many of them are banks, hedge funds, pension funds, and rich family offices.
Once these products go live the level of interest will skyrocket. Just look what happened a few decades ago when Wall Street could sell gold ETFs. And look at how broken the financial system still is.
Wall Street and the big banks are dying to sell something new that has infinite margins and isn’t bonds, stocks, or gold. This opportunity is so obvious my neighbor’s blind poodle can see it.
For us to see a $100,000 per Bitcoin price, we’d need to see a doubling of where we’re at right now. I’m being stupidly conservative. $100K is almost a given. $200k is more likely in 2024.
If you pay close attention this is one of the most obvious trends in tech history. And most people are asleep at the wheel working on their boss’s ideas instead of creating financial independence.
Don’t listen to me. Do your research on what spot ETFs mean for crypto.
Scams are at an all-time high
With opportunity comes risk.
Right now it’s easy to buy crypto and have it taken from you. There are two viable options that most ignore: 1) Have Wall Street store the crypto for you 2) Store your crypto on a hardware wallet in a vault.
Most do neither and get scammed or forget their password and lose the lot.
In Australia we’re going through a scam pandem!c. Criminals and bad actors are using crypto as a way to take money from the banking system and funnel it into all parts of the world.
Heck, I had some money stolen from which ended up in Ru$$ia and helped fund the Ukraine war. I feel bad about it every day.
The reason crypto has such a bad name is because the technology is so useful it can be used for good and criminal use-cases.
As a result the Australian banks in my hometown are doing everything they can to block crypto.
Right now I can’t buy any crypto from anywhere. (Thankfully I set myself up for this bull market a long time ago so it doesn’t worry me.)
My bank won’t let me buy crypto but they will happily let me withdraw all my money in cash and take it to the local casino to lose the lot. It’s not the crypto innovation that’s the problem. No.
It’s humans.
Banning innovation does nothing. Instead, we should build better fraud software and educate average people on the difference between investing and betting. Few understand the difference.
Last week I mentioned crypto in my private Substack group chat. Some idiot created a profile with my face and pitched crypto scams to my readers. I was horrified.
Just innocently talking about crypto can get you or your readers in trouble, so it pays to be aware and diligent (if you ever see any crypto ad from me it’s a scam).
Don’t let scams put you off blockchain and crypto technology, though.
Ethereum hasn’t had its run yet
Bitcoin has done well so far in this up-cycle.
Ethereum hasn’t got started yet. It’s asleep and many people think it’s either dead or had its day. But I’m bullish on Ethereum.
Bitcoin is popular because it has a limited supply of 21M coins. Ethereum has a limited supply that’s decreasing more and more every day. That subtle difference is what most people have missed.
Digital scarcity is crucial because it’s a better store of value than the alternatives of gold and fiat currency, where the supply can be manipulated.
Ethereum can also be staked (think term deposit) and can produce an income. This is an opportunity Wall Street and traditional finance have been searching for and it’s right under their noses.
Yet they haven’t quite figured it out.
They want to get their hands wet with Bitcoin first because it’s trusted and most of them know what it is.
When they get access to Bitcoin ETFs and the technology works as it always has since 2008, they’ll start to broaden their risk appetite and that’s when they’ll likely understand the interest payments they can earn from Ethereum.
And when they wake up to the payments capability of Solana and the sheer throughput, low cost, and speed of transactions, they damn near may nuke their rusty old Swift banking technology and replace it with blockchain.
There’s plenty of opportunity if you can get past the newness and skepticism plague we’re all infected with.
But remember: it’s easier to fling dog poop from the peanut gallery and make fun of crypto with memes than it is to become an investor and do hard research on a new industry.
Don’t be a peanut. Learn from resources like Real Vision on Youtube.
2024 crypto and beyond
The next 12 months will be fascinating.
Interest rate cuts are on the way. The US election will turn on the free money printers again to help those in power bribe us with “stimulus” and “infrastructure bills.”
Of course, the Bitcoin halving in the middle of the year will only drive the bull market even higher as it always has since 2008.
The trend of decentralization, scarce money, an alternative financial system, and permissionless communication between bots and software is so obvious to me I can’t believe more people don’t get it.
The answer isn’t to bet big or load up on Bitcoin. Nope.
What I challenge you to do is go do deep research and see this wisdom for yourself. The financial opportunity is one thing, the career opportunity is another. Do research to get ahead of this trend.
This article is for informational purposes only, it should not be considered financial, tax or legal advice. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.
