Why You're Not Bullish Enough on Crypto

Crypto’s great solar flash into the mainstream… November 19, 2021 [UNSUBSCRIBE]( | [WEBSITE]( [Altucher Confidential] James and I plan to make sure our readers -- that’s you -- are positioned to catch what’s coming with a glove the size of pluto. [Email Masthead] Why You’re Not Bullish Enough on Crypto By Chris Campbell If I Had To Pick ONE Stock To Retire On, I’d Pick This... Most folks dream of a single stock retirement with no more worry about running out of money (or the next market crash). [I've found that one stock you've been searching for.]( You can sit back and retire off this one stock's incredible income. That's how dividend investing can liberate you. [Click here for the full details]( this one stock retirement plan. The only catch is you have to get in before their [next dividend deadline]( to have the earliest shot at a single stock retirement. [Now's your chance!]( Bitwise, the world’s largest crypto index fund manager, recently [released a paper on Decentralized Finance (DeFi)](. In short… 1.] DeFi could disrupt finance in the same way Amazon disrupted Sears. 2.] DeFi is currently undervalued. 3.] The market growth opportunity is up to 15X - 114X They’re wrong. Despite the recent (and pretty normal) crash in the markets… They’re not bullish enough. Why? Because the “DeFi Matrix” is an absolute sea change for finance. Mostly because it solves many problems of traditional finance… And because there hasn’t been any real innovation in finance since double-entry bookkeeping in the 13th century. DeFi is just one part of what we’ve been calling crypto’s “Great Solar Flash” into the mainstream. And James and I plan to make sure our readers -- that’s you -- are positioned to catch what’s coming with a glove the size of pluto. The Great Solar Flash With almost a decade of research under our belts, James and I agree on one thing: This technological shift will be bigger than 99% of the world expects or understands. And it’s YOUR chance to make life-changing wealth… even if you think you’ve missed the boat. It’s become a cliche to say it… But we’re still early. For example, we’re early in crypto gaming. The top crypto game, Axie Infinity, has 2.5 million monthly users. That’s quite the achievement for a blockchain-based game. But… Minecraft has 141 million monthly users. That’s where we’re headed. While DeFi has just over 3 million users… Coinbase has just reached 56 million users. (Where do you think those users will go next?) And, get this… Crypto has about the same number of users the Internet had when Apple released the first iMac. Meaning? There’s massive room for growth. Fortunes will be made and lost in the next decade. That’s why, next week, James and the team are set to launch our biggest project yet… And reveal our favorite cryptos in DeFi, NFTs, gaming, metaverse, and more. Stay tuned. Today, while we put on the finishing touches, we present to you a blast from the past. Years ago, James wrote up everything you need to know about bitcoin. After all this time, everything in this article below still rings true. (Next week, as a follow-up, we’ll show you everything you need to know about Ethereum… and why it’s headed to $100,000. Stay tuned.) Read on. Urgent Crash Warning for Monday, November 22nd, 2021 [bargain to bubble]( already knows that the stock market is in a bubble… But now some experts are starting to predict that the bubble will burst sooner than anyone expected and hit harder than anyone could have imagined. With some experts saying that we could see a stock market sell-off of 80% or more as soon as next week… This could completely decimate the retirement saving of millions of Americans all at once. So if you care about you and your family’s wealth the time to act is NOW. That’s why we flew in one of the top traders in America to tell you exactly what you need to do to get ready for this impending crash… [Click here to see his FREE presentation]( But hurry, because if you wait until Monday, it could already be too late. Everything You Need to Know About Bitcoin By James Altucher Back in 2013, I thought Bitcoin was a scam. I was wrong. In order for cryptocurrencies to succeed, people need to understand at a basic level what they are. Nobody needs to learn complicated cryptography or blockchain. Just understand why this is important for us as a society now. Then you will know the potential for Bitcoin. And you will be popular at cocktail parties. THE PROBLEM WITH MONEY Every new form of money solves the major problems of the last. Barter Barter has a lot of problems. If I have a bag of rice and I need shoes, what if you make shoes but you only need 1/2 bag of rice. Do I get 1/2 a pair of shoes? Then coming up with 1000s of exchange rates just to go out and buy groceries is almost impossible. PLUS, what if you have to move (your kingdom is attacked). How are you going to carry all that rice? All of those shoes? Money has two purposes: - as a store of wealth / savings - to make transactions Barter is horrible as a store of wealth. And for transactions, best case it’s very difficult. But problems lead to opportunities. Which leads to… Precious Metals Gold and silver are scarce. It’s hard to mine. It’s hard to forge because you can measure by weight. So the scarcity combined with the lack of forgery makes them good choices for money. I can convert my rice into gold coins, you can convert your shoes into gold coins, and now we can trade and now we can buy whatever we want. As a store of wealth, it’s not great but not horrible. If my kingdom is attacked and I have to move, gold and silver are easily stored and carried as designed jewelry. BUT, two problems. - What if you live in a country that doesn’t have any gold mines. Now you either have to trade for gold or start attacking countries. - What if you wanted to buy a house right now: are you really going to bring a truck of gold bars to the closing? Or if you have to move to another country and you have a lifetime worth of savings: are you going to ship all of your gold bars to your new home? People say that gold is “real” as opposed to (later) paper money and cryptocurrencies. This is not really true. Gold is a rock. But it does have industrial uses (silver is better for this because of price but still…). Gold and silver are great electric conductors, can be used as SILVERware. Can be used as antibiotics (hence great for fillings on teeth). So we can say that gold money is “backed” by something that has real use with value associated with it. But we still have to solve the problems above. Paper Money Countries made paper money that was like a contract with the government that all of that money can be converted into gold. This was great for transactions (easy to carry paper money). This was great for a store of wealth (put the money in a bank and you can go anywhere). The first banks for paper money backed by gold helped fund every war in Europe in the 1800s. Good job! When paper money is backed by gold it also puts a clamp on inflation. You only have as much paper money in a country as there is gold in that country. So you can trust the government to not go crazy printing money that is not backed by gold (like Germany in the 1920s when trillions of Marks were printed and the country went into an inflationary death spiral that was at least one cause for World War II). BUT, why benefit the countries where gold is easy to mine and punish the countries where gold is hard to mine. Also, the world is expanding in every way: more people, more technology, more innovation, more THINGS. I’m not sure this is a good thing or a bad thing (see: Germany above) but sometimes countries need to balance debt with money printing to manage their fiscal policy. The US went off of gold in the early 70s in order to fund the financial needs of both the Vietnam War and the social programs of Lyndon Johnson. This created inflation. Paper money will often lead to this situation. Someone will say: why do we need the gold part? Again, might be good or bad. There’s a lot of debate. Did money printing save the US in 2008 and 2009? Maybe. Or will there be future problems caused by this? Maybe. Nevertheless, there are other problems with paper money that need to be solved: a. No privacy. If I’m making a sizable (greater than $1000) transaction I’m usually not using cash but either a credit card or a money wire. So that means your bank knows. Other banks know (the bank you are sending money to, the Federal Reserve, the local Reserve bank, etc). Government agencies know (the IRS, the NSA, etc, etc). Potentially sites like Google and Amazon know depending on what payment services you use and what you are buying. So you have no privacy on your transactions with paper money. b. Fees. If I send a friend in Korea money, I go through my bank (fee), local reserve bank (fee), Federal Reserve (fee), International wiring system (fee), their central bank (fee), their local reserve bank (fee), their local bank (fee). That’s a lot of fees. Those fees help create inflation because every transaction needs to have a profit on top of those fees. c. Forgery. Something like $200 billion in forged money is circulating right now. d. Human error. This is a CRITICAL problem. There are so many opportunities for human error. When you transfer money, they can send to the wrong account. Or a bank’s software can be hacked and you lose all of your money. Or, most importantly, the Federal Reserve in the US can decide to print another trillion (Like 2009) and, without your permission, the value of your dollar has gone down. In the US we’ve been lucky. But all of South America hasn’t been so lucky (all of their currencies crashed in the 80s. Most of Asia wasn’t so lucky in the 90s (their currencies wiped them out). Russia in 1997 was wiped out. e. What is backing paper money? Only our trust. I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist. But the reality is: a dollar is a piece of paper. Just like gold is just a rock. How do they make us trust that the money has value? They put “In God We Trust” on it. They put George Washington. They put the signature of the Secretary of Treasury (pretending it’s a contract.). And, for the weirdos, they even put a pyramid with an eye on it. And that’s supposed to be why we trust it. I don’t trust it. ENTER BITCOIN Bitcoin solves the problems above. a. Privacy. I can send you a Bitcoin and nobody knows who is sending it, who is receiving it, and no government institutions are aware of it. b. Fees. Some bitcoin transactions have small fees. But it’s nothing like the fees of going through six banks in the transaction described above. c. Forgery. The software guarantees that Bitcoins can’t be forged. d. Human error. There is no printing of money. There is a fixed supply of 21,000,000 coins. E. What’s backing it? There’s about 1000 man-years of science backing Bitcoin. The underlying technology of Bitcoin which involves heavy amounts of cryptography, financial know-how, and basics of contract law, plus the “blockchain” have 100s of use-cases that we have only just begun to play with. EVEN IF Bitcoin is never used as a coin (although note: it’s being used every day as money) there are 100s or 1000s of other uses for Bitcoin that have nothing to do with the basic money use. I won’t get into the weeds here: but suffice to say that ALL of contract law can be (and will be) eventually replaced by Bitcoin. And ALL of logistics will be replaced by Bitcoin (e.g. UPS is replacing all of their internal logistics (tracking millions of packages every day going from millions of locations to millions of other locations) by Bitcoin technology. There’s nothing behind paper money or gold like this. Now…Bitcoin has problems also. Hence the need for other cryptocurrencies. But that’s ok and not the topic for here. Suffice to say, Bitcoin solves all the basic problems of paper money, which solves the problems of gold, which solves the problems of barter. Well, what should I do now? Don’t listen to me. a. Get an account on Coinbase (or wherever). Buy $10 worth of Bitcoin just to taste and feel it. b. Then read. Read a lot. Here’s some books not about Bitcoin that are worth reading: Sapiens by Yuval Hurari The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson. Antifragile by Nassim Taleb There’s a lot of discussion of cryptocurrencies on Reddit and Twitter. DO NOT read those. Most of those discussions are filled with trolls although there are some decent sources there. Blogs / Sites: start with Coindesk and CoinTelegraph. You’ll find the rest as you read more. EV Stock Boom Alert!! EV stocks are going BALLISTIC right now! Congress just passed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill, so investors are swarming. But WAIT! Before you load up on any big-name EV stocks… There’s ONE tiny company that’s poised to skyrocket on this news… And it’s flying quietly under the radar right now. Now is the time to get a piece of the action. [Click here to learn how](. Subsribe To My Podcast [The James Altucher Show]( [The James Altucher Website]( [Subscribe With YouTube]( [Subscribe On Messenger]( [Subscribe With iTunes]( [Connected on LinkedIn]( Add AltucherConfidential@email.threefounderspublishing.com to your address book: [Whitelist Us]( Join the conversation! Follow me on social media: [Facebook Group]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Pinterest]( [Instagram]( [Three founders Publishing]( To end your Altucher Confidential e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from Altucher Confidential, feel free to [click here](. If you are having trouble receiving your Altucher Confidential subscription, you can ensure its arrival in your mailbox by [whitelisting Altucher Confidential](. 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