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We’ve had a lot of high profile folks on the show lately that represent the “bitcoin maximalist” crowd. In other words, they believe that bitcoin is the only worthwhile blockchain and that every other project/token out there is a “shitcoin”.

There is all sorts of terminology for this—the bitcoiner, the multicoiner, the nocoiner, and then there is the full spectrum in between.

What am I? Well, it’s funny because a couple of years ago I would have been one of those people who said, “blockchain not bitcoin”. Why?…Because I didn’t understand bitcoin as well as I do now. “Blockchain not bitcoin” really means “I have no clue what I’m talking about but I will give you my opinion anyway.”

On the other hand, I’ve come to realize that there is, indeed, and overabundance of needless projects and tokens. So, I would call myself more of a bitcoin maximalist in the long term. However, in the next couple years I actually believe people stand to make a lot more money with the right alt coin than with bitcoin itself.

One of my favorite projects is Worldwide Asset Exchange (WAX). WAX is trading at 3.5 cents right now. WAX will get to 35 cents way before bitcoin does its 10X in my opinion. In fact, when bitcoin has its next 10X bull run, I believe WAX will be up closer to 100X. On the other hand, bitcoin is more likely to be around in 10 years than WAX. Anyway, I think you get my point.

The reality is that there are some really good projects out there that are already using blockchain that are making things more efficient. Peer to peer energy is one of the interesting use cases that I have spoken about on a few occasions. So, as we pick our alts to HODL for the next bull run, we will start exploring some useful blockchain use cases and quality projects.

One of the areas in which blockchain appears to be emerging as a very useful technology is peer to peer energy production and consumption. The clear leader in this area is a Project Called Power Ledger who’s cofounder is our guest on Consensus Network this week.

I’ve been off the air for a while with Consensus Network through the holidays. The good or the bad news is that there isn’t a lot of movement in bitcoin prices.

Infrastructure continues to grow and projects continue to develop throughout crypto winter.

Even though prices aren’t moving dramatically, the technology and laws around it are. 

My guest today is at ground zero for all of those developments.

Her name is Amy Wan. The last time I interviewed her, it was for Wealth Formula about real estate crowdfunding. She’s consistently been at the forefront of technology and the next big thing.

She is now using her law skills to work with, of all things, smart contracts. This conversation was very interesting. We top off the show with some important news as well so make sure to listen to it.

We are in a bear market with cryptocurrency. There is no doubt about that. How long will it last? I have no idea.

However, one day a bull market shall return just as the dotcom’s did after the bubble burst in the late 90s.

Then we will see the blockchain versions of Amazon and Apple skyrocket in value. In the meantime, it is winter.

Now is the time where you learn about projects and buy them at a steep discount. The truth is that the vast majority of these cryptocurrencies will never recover. But the ones that do will come back with a storm.

So how do you spend your time if you want to be part of this eventual boom? You learn. You become part of the conversation.

You can’t do that if you don’t speak the language. That’s where my guest this week on Consensus Network really shines. He is one of the best teachers in blockchain I have yet to encounter.

His name is Chris Coney and he will help you make sense out of a lot of fundamental but difficult concepts in distributed ledger technology.

Consensus Network Weekly Cryptocurrency News 12/19/18

Cryptocurrency Market Capitalization: $125 Billion

Bitcoin Price (Coinbase): $3791

Crypto Come Back or Dead Cat Bounce?

Bitcoin was up just under 7 percent this week. According to theblockcrypto.com, senior market analysts believe that this might be the result of traders closing out short positions.

According to Math Greenspan of eToro, “Closing short sell positions creates an upward pressure on prices. Evidence: BCH is up the most.” BCH or Bitcoin Cash has proven itself to be BTrash over the past month.

Frankly, there is NO other reason for this rally right now. In fact, the global markets themselves are shaky. I do not subscribe to the idea that bitcoin is yet an uncorrelated asset.

In times of uncertainty, people sell off speculative assets. Most of the world views bitcoin and especially other cryptocurrencies that way.

My vote: dead cat bounce. There is no reason for a recovery right now. 

Is the Bear Market Scaring Off Institutional Money?

According to Bloomberg, JP Morgan analysts believe that the protracted cryptocurrency bear market is driving away institutional interest.

The report sites decreasing interest in the open contracts on bitcoin futures at the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. Last month was apparently the lowest level of interest since the futures trading began in December of 2017.

A similar sentiment was recently reported by Coinshares CSO Meltem Demirors. 

In my view, that is what makes this crash “different”. Many crypto enthusiasts boast about seeing these kinds of corrections several times and not being phased by them.

However, we were on the precipice of seeing bitcoin go mainstream. The crash, mainly triggered by a ridiculous battle between bitcoin cash rivals has hurt the ecosystem at large and I suspect will delay an ETF and other advancements of bitcoin within the Wall Street Ecosystem.

Startup to Focus on Accepting Lightening Network Merchant Payments

OpenNode, a startup backed by Tim Draper, raised $1.25 million to help build a new bitcoin payment platform that focuses on ease of use.

The software essentially makes it very easy for merchants to accept bitcoin. What makes it different from Bitpay and Coinbase Commerce is that it allows for merchants to accept bitcoin through the lightning network— a second layer that allows for cheap instantaneous transactions of bitcoin off-chain. You can learn more about lightening network on our recent interview with Samson Mow of Blockstream.

I love the technology and it will be interesting how it plays out. I’m also interested in understanding how bitcoin taxes will be paid if it is actually used for transactions. In other words, when you pay someone with bitcoin that has gone up in value, will that be a taxable event. 

If you pay someone in gold, it is a taxable event. This could be a problem for mass adoption of bitcoin as a payment system in the US.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but people are overusing the word blockchain. In fact, a recent article I read exposed twelve publicly traded companies that reaped huge valuation rewards simply by adding the word “bitcoin” or “blockchain” to their name.

Now listen, this technology that is coming through is special. I have no doubt about it. But even actual blockchain projects may not have a real reason to include distributed ledgers.

All of this, of course, is going to flush out over the next decade. Our job, in the meantime, is to understand the technology as well as we can and to try to understand for what it is best suited.

My guest this week on Consensus Network has a special set of skills. His ability to think at both a macro level and as an analyst evaluating projects is impressive.

His name is Nic Carter and he is going to help us navigate through the rapidly changing world of distributed ledger technology.

If you follow the crypto world like I do, it seems almost a little bit ridiculous sometimes with all of these personalities threatening each other and massively volatile digital asset prices.

My friend Teeka Tiwari calls these conflicts the “nerd wars” and thinks we should ignore the noise. I tend to agree in the larger scheme of things. However, I do think that this kind of chatter hurts the evolution of this asset class.

In times like these it is important to understand that underlying all of this stuff is a world-changing technology—blockchain—and it was all started by one white paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto.

That white paper gave us one of the most elegant ideas of the century. It’s called bitcoin. Over time, it is my opinion that we will see bitcoin evolve into something of tremendous significance.

However, we aren’t their yet and part of the issue is that we are still in the early stages trying to understand how we can unleash all of its potentials.

As a payment system, it has run up against some challenges with regard to scaling. How do you keep this elegant system intact while making it something that can be used for everyday transactions?

This question ultimately led to a major schism in the bitcoin community in August of 2017 which led to the split between bitcoin and bitcoin cash.

I have been trying to get someone to intelligently speak about the issues surrounding the scaling of bitcoin and I was fortunate to find one of the brightest minds in the field, Samson Mow from Blockstream. Listen now to hear how he thinks bitcoin should be scaled.

Consensus Network Weekly Crypto News 12/5/18

Cryptocurrency Market Capitalization: approx $124 Billion

Bitcoin Price (Coinbase): $3713

SEC Meets with VanEck SolidX/CBOE to discuss bitcoin ETF…Again

We have been talking about this bitcoin ETF for some time now that involves a couple of major players including the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE). A lot of people believed that given the CBOE involvement that this ETF would eventually find its way through the SEC. So representatives from all of the involved parties met again on November 28th.

As you may recall, the last meeting occurred October 9th at which time the attempt was made to convince the SEC that the market is mature enough to support the ETF. Of course that was before the market plummeted from news surrounding bitcoin cash and the war between Roger Ver and Faketoshi, Craig Wright. I’m not sure that was good for their case!

This most recent meeting was in attempts to present the case that bitcoin is a commodity like silver or gold which already have ETFs. Furthermore, the case was made that several qualities of bitcoin and the bitcoin market make it less susceptible market manipulation than other commodities. 

The full presentation is on the SEC website. Suffice it to say that the case is compelling but I’m not sure the SEC is going to let it happen with all the money that has been lost in the cryptocurrency market this year. 

My guess is that we will see Bakkt, ErisX and Fidelity bring in more money and make this a larger more liquid market before the SEC will go for an ETF. We will continue to follow this story carefully.

SEC Penalizes Floyd Mayweather Jr. and DJ Khaled for Illegal ICO Promotion:

Boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. and DJ Khaled have large Twitter followings—something which I do not. Both Celebs were also paid to promote ICO’s on their Twitter accounts and did not disclose payments.

Mayweather was paid at least $300K over the course of just a few months and DJ Khaled was paid $50K. Why anyone would take financial advice from Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled is beyond me personally.

The SEC has banned them from doing any further such promotions, ordered disgorgement of promotional funds received and tacked on interest and penalties for both celebrities to pay.

Of course these two guys were not the only ones doing this. There are bloggers and podcasters in the space that were doing the same that will almost certainly be under investigation by the SEC.

Frankly, we need this if the blockchain space is to succeed. We need to purge this world of as many charlatans as possible and focus on the technology. Things like this make the industry look bad and we need do a better job of self-regulating the industry if we are to be taken seriously.

One good outcome of the crypto blood bath is that all of these guys are suddenly silent and BS ICO’s are disappearing every day. We need to purge these elements to move forward.

I would like to point out that I seem to be the only one to have STARTED a podcast in the bear market. Hopefully that shows you my true conviction!

Bitcoin Declared Dead!…Again.

Several media outlets that have no clue what they are talking about have yet again declared bitcoin dead. This time, the focus has been on the idea that the price of bitcoin has dipped below a point at which miners will continue to secure the network. This has been characterized as the bitcoin “death spiral”.

The problem is, it’s just not true. Bitcoin adjusts its difficulty according to the hash rate—for every minor that turns off, mining becomes more profitable for the remaining miners. 

Bitcoin Mining difficulty dropped by 15 percent Monday—which was the second largest drop in ASIC history. Decreases in difficulty make it cheaper to mine. The math isn’t quite as hard for the computers to solve.

Now also remember that some major minors are located in China with ridiculously inexpensive costs of electricity. Other minors are being subsidized by their gov

Consensus Network Weekly Crypto News 11/28/18

Cryptocurrency Market Capitalization: $138 billion

Bitcoin Price (Coinbase): $4196

Bitcoin Upturn or Dead Cat Bounce?

Bitcoin broke through the $4000 level and flirted with $3500. Today, everyone is getting excited because the market is up. In fact, bitcoin is up almost 20 percent since yesterday.

I’m not a trader. I’ve made that very clear in the past so I don’t buy and sell on short-term market movements. However, I am looking for a bottom because my long-term view on bitcoin and blockchain is very bullish. So, I’m eager to buy more when it’s on sale.

Now just because I’m not a trader doesn’t mean I don’t respect the abilities of those who are. Tyler Jenks was on the show a few weeks back when bitcoin was sitting in the mid $6000s and was about as sure as anyone that it was going to plummet in the short term. To be honest, I didn’t believe him until he literally called it the day before on Twitter. It was like watching Babe Ruth point to the rafters and hit it out of the park.

Now Tyler says that this really is short term and, even if it goes back up to $6K, it’s going easily sub $3k before it takes off. Tyler is seriously bearish on bitcoin price but highly bullish on bitcoin’s future so he’s looking to buy in as well. But he thinks we are going lower before we go back up. One of the things I have learned over the years is that it’s not a good thing to be the smartest guy in the room. You want to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you at various different tasks.

Tyler is a technical analyst and can identify good times to buy better than me for sure. So, I’m just going to buy more when Tyler tells me to buy more on his YouTube channel. You should check it out. It’s way over my head but fascinating nonetheless. 

So… bitcoin price may be headed south, but don’t let that fool you into this narrative that bitcoin is dead. While this uptick in bitcoin price may be a dead cat bounce, bitcoin has shown over the years that it has at least nine lives.

We’ve talked about the institutional frameworks that are now being built and those are not slowing down. And people are not slowing down their use of bitcoin. Bitcoin transactions have actually reached their highest level since mid-January. In fact, the number of daily transactions on the bitcoin blockchain is approximately the same as Mastercard.

Why is this significant? What gives Bitcoin its value? What gives anything value? Ultimately it’s faith in the system and the bitcoin blockchain is not being utilized any less than it was at $20K bitcoin.

I don’t know when, but I am quite sure a bitcoin bull run will happen again and this time it will include big money institutional investors that will take it to new highs.  I truly believe that we are seeing a tremendous transfer of wealth happening from scared retail investors selling to institutional ones who are buying from over the counter platforms like genesis. Individuals are selling and institutions are buying and they are going to make most of the money…like they always do.

SEC Chairman Comments Cast Doubts on ETF Approval

Jay Clayton, chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, speaking at Consensus: Invest Conference reiterated previous concerns about the cryptocurrency market’s exposure to market manipulation.

This was one of the reasons cited by the SEC in multiple rejections of ETF applications. Many were optimistic about the CBOE/Van Eck Solid ETF being considered by the SEC, but Clayton suggested he did not think that had yet been accomplished.

Of course, the CBOE application addresses this problem with pegging the eta prices to over-the-counter trading such as Genesis Trading but given the recent events in the cryptocurrency world, I would personally be shocked if the application is in fact approved next year although eventually I think it is inevitable given the interest from institutional and retail investors.

Ohio Accepts Bitcoin for T

There is blood in the streets of blockchain and I won’t be surprised if there is more. 

I suspect that it will get worse before it gets better. This whole thing started out with a consolidation and an uncharacteristically low volatility in crypto. 

The question was whether it was going to break up or break down. For those of us looking solely at the macro picture, the involvement of institutions and the potential for an ETF made us believe things were going to break for the better.

In the meantime, the technical guys, the guys who just look at the charts, were calling it the other way. Tyler Jenks, who was on this show just a couple of weeks ago called this sell-off. But he also believes it’s going down towards $1000 before we are out of the bear market.

Maybe he’s right. For better or worse, we shall see. The interesting thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of these guys who called this sell-off and still see it heading south are, overall, very bullish on bitcoin. Tyler thinks after the sell-off it will head up into mid-six figure territory. 

In other words, what we are seeing here is a very psychological event that really has no fundamental reason. Sure there was the bitcoin cash hard fork and the threat from Faketoshi about dumping one million bitcoin but that shouldn’t drive billions out of the market should it? 

It’s all emotion and automation at this point. A lot of people program stop losses to lock in their profits so when the price starts drifting down, their bitcoin automatically gets sold off. You saw that a lot around $6000. Below that is the abyss. Very few people planned for it so the price is in free fall.

It’s important in times like this to understand, though, that this is not the first time bitcoin and crypto have been pronounced dead. It’s happened multiple times before. This time, there is institutional infrastructure built for this thing to succeed in the long run so the likelihood of “death” is really very small in my estimation.

Furthermore, underlying all of this volatility is a new technology that will have seismic effects on the world. If you believe that, you may still believe that bitcoin prices will be over $100,000 per coin over the next five years. I am in that camp.

If that’s the case, does it matter if you bought in at $6500 or $3500? Either way, you would do quite well. I know it’s hard to think rationally when your brain tells you to run away but that is what separates good investors from the bad ones.

Warren Buffett said, “Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful.” There is a lot of fear out there right now so, again, it might be time to get greedy pretty soon.

That said, if you don’t want the hassles of dealing with wallets and trading platforms, there is a way to just buy the market when you think it’s bottomed out or stabilized. 

It’s through a company called Bitwise Management. This week on Consensus Network, I interview HunterHorsely, cofounder and CEO of bitwise. 

If you’re thinking about taking advantage of this crash but don’t know where to start, don’t miss this episode.

By the way, it was recorded before this crash so never mind the talk about the stability of the markets!

It used to be that bitcoin was just for quirky libertarian computer scientists but somehow the virus has spread gradually into big money.

How something that was never advertised goes from nothing to over $100 billion market cap in 10 years and ushers in an entirely new digital currency asset class is mind-boggling to me.

So, it is particularly interesting to people who watched it happen. Michael Moro has been involved with bitcoin trading before the infamous Mount Gox hack and has watched it mature to where it is today.

In this episode, he will take us on that journey and use that perspective on the future of institutional interest in cryptocurrency.