2nd April

Chico

Look at xdai — many applications sticking with solid fundamentals, which xdai has, xdai works, and it is ready now. So it could be one to get onboard right now.

Bitcoin is having a rough time breaking 60k with all the bullish news that is going on, VISA etc. The first run up to 60k came from Elon Musk announcing that Tesla was buying BTC. But since then, there have been numerous stories, Goldman Sachs announcing that they would be offering their clients the option of adding Bitcoin to their portfolios, along with some other bullish news. But Chico is cautious right now, because something stinks.

He also looks into chips, and the fact that mining chips are literally mostly just gaming chips at the moment, and as they have been designed as gaming chips, they do not efficiently fill the role of mining chips. There’s a chip company that might be bringing out a specific mining chip, especially since their competitors have already done the same.

UpOnly tv — an interview with Mark Cuban

An interesting point — Mark Cuban is learning Solidity. This is evidently important, or he wouldn’t take the time to do it. He is giving his most prized asset, in order to learn Solidity, that speaks volumes.

Mark Cuban lost money on shitcoins in 2017. If he, as an experienced investor, with many years under his belt of looking at various stocks, businesses, initiatives, and more, can make mistakes, then so can just about anybody. So it is not a bad thing if we make mistakes. It is part and parcel of the learning curve.

He’s basically saying that the future of NFTs (or where the money is going to go) is into business applications and entertainment, not into art and collectibles.

He’s also bullish on insurance. He for example, owns the Mets. He sees that with an oracle bringing in weather data, this can plug into an insurance contract, so that he can get an insurance payout if the temperature goes below zero for a match day (and the game gets called off). This for example, saves so much hassle that has previously been around insurance, with ringing to get a payout, and taking ages to get a claim. Now, the claim can be validated, and if it receives 80% + validation, then a payout can be made, and this can be done in 6 minutes, rather than 6 weeks.

This seems pretty bullish for another thing that I have previously invested in — which is DIP (Decentralised Insurance Protocol). These guys have a Chainlink partnership and are doing exactly the kind of thing which Mark is talking about here.

Also, for example with ticketing, often in Stubhub, brokers are listing tickets they don’t even own. So in this way, you can get verification, you can see exactly what’s in peoples’ wallets, you can have it to show that they are at the game.

What it looks like is that now, all this information, and all these processes, they are now able to interlink with each other in seamless ways, which were impossible before. Trusted information, interlinking with each other, so that it stacks on top of one another. Previously, each company had to collect new information — new company, new data sheet, new this, new that, all these processes being repeated over and over, wasting so much time and effort on remedial tasks. Now these are aggregative, so it’s a case of plugging one thing into another thing, and routing them to each other.

The trust makes it able to be used again and again, and again, by many parties. The trust is in the network, therefore the liability is removed.

But the biggest and coolest stuff is going to happen in business and entertainment, rather than arts and collectibles.

Most of this stuff that we’re seeing at the moment with NFTs is just a proof of concept.

What sort of infrastructure is missing, which is preventing mass adoption at the moment?

Not an efficient connectivity between all the exchanges. Rug pulls, missing liquidity, lack of efficient liquidity flow between the exchanges. “You get games being played, that shouldn’t happen, if all those indexes were connected together”.

Not efficient market happening at the moment. Exchanges don’t have to show you the best price. This is the sort of thing that builds trust.

Another thing is simplifying the user interfaces. There’s not enough trust at the moment, because the systems make it hard. The fact that you need a wallet at the moment makes it hard (because you have to go through set up, prior to using the service).

But he makes an interesting point about trust issues. Crypto is something that most people have trust issues with. For this reason, they are scared of it, they fear the worst, they don’t use it, and they’ll hear all the bad stuff about it, repeat it, and exaggerate it in their minds, to the point of not using it. Many are so used to having trust ready-made for them, that they scarcely go beyond it, to get into new things. But just because we don’t trust something, doesn’t mean that it is not trustworthy. It usually just means that we don’t know enough information about it, to get a lay of the land, and to trust it.

Hyper-connectivity with wallets is coming. Where you can build applications into a wallet, so that it can travel with the wallet wherever it goes, rather than having to connect to every website in order to sort things. This is something that Atomic Wallet are doing.

This is called Tokenscript, which is a combination of Javascript, MXL and HTML. Usually all the application work is done through a website.

Transactions per second is the equivalent of bandwidth.

How do you price in things you’re investing in, whereby you can see where it’s going to go, but the infrastructure isn’t quite there yet?

Basically by giving people things that they couldn’t get anywhere else. Being in the best possible position there, and then when the infrastructure catches up, you’ve won, because you’re the fastest horse out there (and you capture a huge market share, because you have effectively levelled up the legacy solutions). You’re losing money at the time, but if you can price it in, then you can find ways to do it.

When things are getting frothy, how do you stay sane, and act rationally?

By remembering why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Also by looking at the utility of these things. What are the use cases they are solving, what is the size of the market they might capture? How much needs to happen in order for them to capture that market share? But by asking, “what are these things going to be used for, realistically?”.

What are the potential regulatory roadblocks up ahead?

Fractionalisation, because these are effectively securities.

Also fraud, in Defi, because it’s it’s a game of musical chairs.

But the regulation won’t necessarily be a bad thing for crypto, long term especially, because it’ll smooth it out and build trust, so that more users will come onboard and add value to the respective platforms, chains and apps.

Crypto will do to Fintech what Fintech did to banking. And Fintech will take the hit first.

Have you looking into any of the other chains, the “Eth-killers”? E.g. polkadot, Binance smart chain, Solana

“It won’t necessarily be a zero-sum game, but there’s definitely going to be a lot of losers”.

There’s so many devs on Eth.

It’s not like an organisation, saying “we’re making so much mutha fukin money, let em come at us”. Because that’s just not how it works.

The more they do that’s better for it, and the more they do for the community, the more everybody makes. So there’s no reason to do things the way they’ve always been done.

The only issue is going from proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. So other eth-killers need to get there fast to pick up the momentum.

Also as a side note — on uponly tv, they were chatting before they started the interview. I suppose it makes for a more relaxed atmosphere all round.

He just bought the Lazy.com url, and adapted it for an NFT art gallery. It might be a good idea to buy some domain names that you think might be cool domains to make things out of. If not, you don’t lose that much, and you can always sell them.

Inside / Outside track on NFTs

It’s hard for people to understand why people are speculating the way they are. So that creates the intrigue, but also the uncertainty.

This isn’t Picasso or Damien Hurst or some amazing artist who already carries repute, these are new people, they don’t always have huge followings.

That’s what makes the market bifurcated between the speculators and the rest.

[how much do you see this sort of group investing, you know, the Wall Street Bets, social sharing of information thing was super super super big, at the same time that there’s lots of crypto DAOs happening, using crypto for consensus decision-making, do you think this is going to get more and more popular, and you’re gonna see a Wall Street Bet-type DAO product in the future?]

He’s already been pitched them. It makes perfect sense. He’s been pitched multiple of them. WSB-type DAO, where it’s community decision-making, the problem is, how do you allocate power within the community?

Because typically it comes from who owns the most, right? He who has the most gold rules, golden rule. A plutocracy effectively. And that’s the anti-thesis of what you want to see in a DAO, and community principles, and so that’s the catch 22 on those things as you really dig in.

He could come in, or somebody even wealthier, and buy it up, and just have everybody do what he wanted them to do.

Same problem in games. The people who got the land first, they’re the ones that have the most say. And it’s harder for the noobies to come in and have their say. And there are good strategies coming in. But you’ve gotta figure out that balance, and make sure that the community can have an impact, and that’s the hard part.

[how do you make it, what would you say to young peeps, etc etc?]

First, figure out your definition of success. Because when you’re 18 particularly, you’re not going to know what the fuck you’re gonna be when you grow up, and like he was when he was motivated to start a business when he was young, he didn’t know what he was good at, you gotta find something.

No matter what age you are, you gotta figure out what you’re good at.

And once you know what you’re good at, then you gotta bust your ass harder than anybody to be great at it.

And then when you’re great at something, it becomes easier to monetize it. And when you’re really good and you’re monetizing, nobody quits, because then you get really fired up and then you make things happen.

But you’ve got to find something you’re good at.

With crypto, if it’s DEFI. The thing about DEFI is that it’s changing at 100 mph every second, every day. There something knew every second. 6 months ago you could feel confident that you knew what was going on, today you can’t. There’s no way you’re gonna read all the litepapers and whitepapers and figure out how people are competing with each other. That’s an opportunity for everybody.

If you outwork Mark Cuban, if you outwork Cobie or Ledger, if you outwork everybody in the industry, you’re gonna have a place.

If you’re willing to teach yourself some programming, and take some solidity classes, or cadence classes if you’re into flow, or whatever it may be, you’re gonna have a place in this. And within a year or two, if you get good at that stuff, and you bust your ass at it, you’re gonna have a way to make some money, and you saw people who didn’t have programming or technical backgrounds get into crypto, love it, and live it, and learn it, and that’s what gave them the edge, and the ability to participate.

And Mark had to do the same thing. It’s hard. And so what you’re seeing is, the big players, it’s just pray and spray. And so he thinks that ETH has a good chance of succeeding, because it becomes simple amid ever-increasing complexity. And then it moves faster.