By MGR Agency
5
33 ratings
The podcast currently has 89 episodes available.
When it comes to crypto, I'm sure a lot of you have seen the acronyms FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) mentioned in a variety of articles. None of them is new though since they've also been used in the past when referring to any type of speculative stock investment for a long time. Only now with Crypto's growth and volatility in the news every day, both types of 'fear' have resurfaced stronger than ever.
As with any other type of investment, the key is researching and acquiring enough knowledge to understand the pros and cons of this relatively new asset class. But even more important, is the fact that no matter where you decide to invest your money, you need to be able to sleep well at night. Any investment that stresses you out and/or causes you sleepless nights is probably not good for you.
One thing is certain. No investment is 100% safe, and much less any investment in crypto assets. However, neither is any investment in fiat currencies subject to uncontrolled inflation, fluctuations in value, and government manipulation. Think of Decentralized Financing as a new way to complete transactions and a new asset class that it's still in its infancy and with a lot of room to grow. The same FUD and FOMO was common when the Internet came into our lives three decades ago.
During the Dot Com bubble, a lot of poorly run companies failed right away, and many other companies with solid leadership and fundamentals became the FAANGS that have now become part of our everyday lives. If I told you just 10-15 years ago that you would have to enter your credit card information on a website to book a flight, pay a medical bill or buy groceries , you would think I'm crazy. Today, you can't go about your life without doing it several times a day.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Want more?
Subscribe to The Edge eComm Digest and receive weekly news directly in your INBOX >
Check our other stuff out too:
This episode is brought to you by MGR Agency. Scaling marketing for leading digital brands.
If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends. If you REALLY liked it, please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for watching or listening!
In this episode:
David and I go over our opinion on what caused the crypto crash this week. But above all, we put it all in PERSPECTIVE. That's our keyword for this episode.
Bitcoin (BTC) reached an all time high at $64,829.14 in mid-April, and during this week's crash, it lost as much as 40% in value in just a few hours. Ethereum's token (ETH) suffered just as much if not more after dropping to around $2,000 per token from an all-time high of $4,382.73 set earlier this month.
And of course when two key players plunge, the rest of the players in the crypto neighborhood suffer just as much. But here's where Perspective comes to play...
Despite the recent drastic drop in value, over the past six to eight months, the value of Bitcoin has more than quadrupled since lurking around $10,000 last September. By the same token (pun intended) if you look at the price of ETH in September 2020 it was around $325. Now, AFTER the crash, it's trading at around $2,800 as I type this. True, it's not the $4,200 from a couple of weeks ago, but still, I would take this 8X gain in 9 months anytime, anywhere. That's PERSPECTIVE.
It is also worth mentioning that during this period, major financial institutions including Goldman Sachs, National Bank of Canada, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, as well as major hedge funds and other public companies including PayPal and Xbox, are adopting cryptocurrencies as part of their assets class or offerings.
If you're just a casual trader trying to make a quick buck over the past few weeks with all the free money received from the government, chances are, you've lost it all and then some more. However, if you're a long term investor with a proper strategy, even after this crash, you're still much better off than you were just 10 months ago, and definitely much better than if you had just parked your money in a traditional savings account.
What goes up, must come down. You just need to plan for it and make it part of your game plan. At the same time, not all crypto currencies, exchanges, protocols are created equal. Solid protocols will survive these types of crashes and come back stronger. The weakest ones, will just disappear and rightfully so. It's no different than any company surviving a recession or becoming a victim of it.
So, there you have it. It's crypto. It's volatile. Get used to it.
Want more?
Subscribe to The Edge eComm Digest and receive weekly news directly in your INBOX >
Check our other stuff out too:
This episode is brought to you by MGR Agency. Scaling marketing for leading digital brands.
If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends. If you REALLY liked it, please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for watching or listening!
In this episode:
Why SNL has lost its mojo, so much so, that even Elon Musk's appearance can't help bringing it back. His performance was OK and according to Nielsen, the show's ratings were third highest this season, just below the ones hosted by comedians Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle in terms of ratings.
But if the show had a boost in ratings, Dogecoin price went in the opposite direction. Dogecoin’s price dropped from 66 cents to below 55 cents during the show, and fell to 43 cents in the hours following the program. Musk mentioned Dogecoin by making fun of the cryptocurrency, and even his mother, Maye joined the fun. “I’m excited for my Mother’s Day gift. I just hope it’s not Dogecoin.”
Meanwhile, on a more serious (or maybe not) note, Elon Musk also announced on Wednesday that Tesla won't accept Bitcoin moving forward. This just 3 months after Tesla announced that it would begin taking Bitcoin as payment. Why the back pedaling?
"We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel," Musk said in a statement posted to his Twitter account. And by the way, it was also three months ago when Tesla also said at the time that it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin (which it plans to keep). Needless to say, that caused the typical overreaction in the Crypto market with most crypto currencies dropping in value around 8-10%. Haven't we seen this movie many times before?
Moving on to Amazon news, we know that this year's Prime Day will be sometime in June. When? We don't know yet. But sellers are starting to get a little anxious since they need a few weeks to prep and ship their inventory. But not all sellers will be around for Prime Day 2021. That's because Amazon has suspended several top Chinese sellers accounts and their products have all disappeared from Amazon over the past few days. At least eleven accounts that originate from Greater China were suspended, according to Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of Marketplace Pulse.
Among others, Mpower and Aukey were two of the most successful brands native to the American marketplace. According to Kaziukenas, the total gross merchandise value (GMV) of the suspended accounts was over a billion dollars to Amazon.
Amazon didn't comment on the status of the suspended accounts, but said in a statement for TechCrunch that it has "long-standing policies to protect the integrity of our store, including product authenticity, genuine reviews and products meeting the expectations of our customers. We take swift action against those that violate them, including suspending or removing selling privileges," said an Amazon spokesperson.
Want more?
Subscribe to The Edge eComm Digest and receive weekly news directly in your INBOX >
Check our other stuff out too:
This episode is brought to you by MGR Agency. Scaling marketing for leading digital brands.
If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends. If you REALLY liked it, please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for watching or listening!
Decentralized finance—DeFi—refers to the shift from traditional, centralized financial systems to peer-to-peer finance enabled by the Ethereum blockchain. The replacement of financial intermediaries with automated digital contracts, is a big deal today with around $76 billion in assets locked up on Ethereum alone. From stablecoins, to lending and borrowing, to prediction markets, margin trading, payments, or insurance, the DeFi ecosystem is growing at an incredible pace.
A paper released by Netherlands based ING Bank last month titled “Lessons Learned from Decentralised Finance,” carefully weighs some of DeFi’s pros and cons. ING blockchain lead Herve Francois recently pointed out that “DeFi could be more disruptive than Bitcoin to the financial sector,” adding that the crypto-friendly Dutch lender has the ecosystem in its sights.
According to Coindesk, "there are at least 2 million wallets that have interacted with DeFi protocols. So that probably means something like more than a million individuals, maybe even close to two? It’s very hard to say, but it is also worth noting that sometimes individuals participate in DeFi via third parties. So while some users hold many wallets, it’s also true that some wallets represent many users."
The site Crypto Fees has been tracking usage fees charged on different DeFi applications. The top DeFi applications it lists (Uniswap, AAVE, SushiSwap and Compound) show a seven-day average of daily fees collected ranging from $1 million to more than $4 million.
If there’s one kind of finance that everyone understands, it is borrowing and lending. While traditional financial institutions are offering close to zero yield for your savings, DeFi represents a much more credible narrative with more substantive businesses because it shows products with genuine returns and provides a way for people to earn impressive yields on deposits rather than losing the value of their money due to inflation.
But as all things investing, there are also associated risks that every investor should know about. So, be extremely thorough and careful and only invest in DeFi after completely assessing all potential risks.
Finally, on a lighter note, we chat about the Phoenix Suns making the play-offs for the first time in ten years! Not only that, but as of this recording, the Suns have the best record in the NBA. Take a screen shot of that and mint it! :-)
Want more?
Subscribe to The Edge eComm Digest and receive weekly news directly in your INBOX >
Check our other stuff out too:
This episode is brought to you by MGR Agency. Scaling marketing for leading digital brands.
If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends. If you REALLY liked it, please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for watching or listening!
In this episode:
So Facebook has just quietly announced that they will be canceling Facebook Analytics in June, allowing advertisers two months to gather or download any past reporting data before it disappears. Why is this (or is not) big news?
Well, for professional marketers, Facebook Analytics was pretty much useless. What started as an attempt to match Google Analytics, ended up very much dead on arrival. Reporting was so simple that you couldn't make any use of it. While Google Analytics keeps improving on a regular basis, Facebook Analytics was stuck with the same old and very basic reports that had little or no use.
But the more relevant issue is that the disappearance of Facebook Analytics is just one more sign of how the new iOS14 privacy requirement imposed by Apple has affected the second largest online advertising platform. The issue has been debated to death since Apple made the initial announcement in June 2020. Since then, Facebook has fought hard (and unsuccessfully) to convince Apple to reverse this rule. But the new policy is here to stay.
If you're interested in Facebook's own opinion about this policy, you can read it here.
Of course, Apple's side is completely the opposite caring most about its users privacy and their ability to choose what information they want to share with any of the apps.
The bottom line is that advertisers and marketers are going to need to adjust their strategies to account for the new policy. The accuracy of their audience targeting will decrease and more likely the revenue generating by their ad campaigns on Facebook/Instagram will also decrease accordingly. To what extent? Only time will tell but so far, it's not looking so good for Facebook.
Finally, we shift gears completely to cover briefly what the new Uniswap V3 means in the crypto world. For reference, Uniswap, is the leading decentralized exchange (DEX) on Ethereum and a centerpiece of the $42 billion decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. David delves into some of the details but the key change, as outlined in the new white paper, is what Uniswap is calling “concentrated liquidity.”
“In this paper, we present Uniswap v3, a novel AMM (Automated Market Maker) that gives liquidity providers more control over the price ranges in which their capital is used, with limited effect on liquidity fragmentation and gas inefficiency,” it states.
The lead author of the white paper was Hayden Adams, Uniswap’s founder, and three other members of the team. It also includes Dan Robinson of Paradigm, the VC fund led by Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam.
Want more?
Subscribe to The Edge eComm Digest and receive weekly news directly in your INBOX >
Check our other stuff out too:
This episode is brought to you by MGR Agency. Scaling marketing for leading digital brands.
If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends. If you REALLY liked it, please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for watching or listening!
Getting crypto currency is just the first step while storing it safely requires entirely different skills and knowledge. In this episode, David and i go over different options available today to protect your funds, choose the right combination of wallets, and minimize the risk of the most common hazards of crypto security.
Let's start with the first common question: Should you keep your crypto at your crypto exchange? The answer is no. Unless you're planning on using it for frequent trading, after you buy any type of crypto assets, you should move them out of the exchange and into your crypto wallet. There are many reasons to do this, but primarily, as long as you keep your crypto with the exchange, you don't actually OWN your crypto. The exchange has the keys, not you. You want to change that right away.
So, What Is A Crypto Wallet?
In a nutshell, you can think of a crypto wallet as a software program designed to store your public and private keys, send and receive digital currencies, monitor their balance, and interact with various blockchains. The moment you decide to purchase digital currencies, you will need to have a crypto wallet to manage your crypto assets and keep them secure.
There are two types of crypto wallets depending on how you access them, and they are typically referred to as Hot Wallet and Cold Wallet.
A Hot Wallet is the type of wallet that is connected to the internet (either via phone app or desktop app) and it can be accessed anytime. All online cloud wallets, most mobile apps and software wallets as well as crypto exchanges are considered hot wallets. They are also free in most cases.
A Cold Wallet, also referred to as a Hardware wallet, is NOT connected to the internet and it allows you to store your digital assets offline. The most commonly used cold wallets utilize USB and offline similar data storage devices. These wallets are not free and the price ranges from around $50 to upwards of $200 as of this writing.
If you're a serious crypto investor, you would probably want to use a combination of both cold and hot wallets. Hot wallets are handy for frequent trading, while cold wallets are better for long-term holding of crypto assets and stronger security.
We also discuss other crypto diversification strategies such as DeFi, most commonly used tokens and NFTs.
Want more?
Subscribe to The Edge eComm Digest and receive weekly news directly in your INBOX >
Check our other stuff out too:
This episode is brought to you by MGR Agency. Scaling marketing for leading digital brands.
If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends. If you REALLY liked it, please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for watching or listening!
It's been a year since the WHO declared COVID-19 a Pandemic on March 11, 2020. We go over our thoughts about what we’ve learned, what has changed, and what will it take to get back as close as possible to our former normal lives.
At what point do we consider that COVID is under control. Zero Covid is just not realistic. However, we can achieve herd immunity even if some cases of COVID will always remain and even become a seasonal virus.
Several states have announced returning to unrestricted activities. Among them, Texas, Maryland, Mississippi, Connecticut, Arizona, West Virginia and Wyoming. Others are starting to lift restrictions including, New York, New Jersey and California, which is re-opening theme parks, stadiums and ball parks.
President Biden has instructed states to make vaccines available to all adults by May 1st, 2021, with the hope that we will enjoy our 4th of July national holiday without restrictions. That does not mean that everyone will have it available due to distribution challenges.
As of today, 95.7 million vaccines have been administered. 62 million or 25% of adult Americans over 18 have received at least 1 dose; 32 million are fully vaccinated (2 doses). When looking at adults over 65 years or older, 62% have received at least one dose and 32% have received two.
The pace of vaccination is there to meet the target dates. Let's hope that by the summer, we have COVID under control.
We finish this podcast with David's NBA predictions for the second half of the season and Manuel's favorite race series, Formula 1, pre-season testing happening this weekend in Bahrain.
Want more?
Subscribe to The Edge eComm Digest and receive weekly news directly in your INBOX >
Check our other stuff out too:
This episode is brought to you by MGR Agency. Scaling marketing for leading digital brands.
If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends. If you REALLY liked it, please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for watching or listening!
In this episode:
We talk about the Crypto Collectibles new craze. Digital art selling for thousands and a lot of wealthy people and celebrities are already cashing in.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are here to stay and if you don't know what they are, you're missing out. We're talking about unique virtual tokens that can represent anything from art to sports memorabilia.
And yes, people are paying thousands of dollars for these NFTs. So much so, that the NBA has made over $150 million as of this recording in the last seven days through their platform NBA Top Shot.
We end the episode discussing Decentralized Financing or DeFi. Looking for a higher yield for your savings? DeFi might be your solution but it has its own risks. What it is, how it works, what are the risks?
Want more?
Subscribe to The Edge eComm Digest and receive weekly news directly in your INBOX >
Check our other stuff out too:
This episode is brought to you by MGR Agency. Scaling marketing for leading digital brands.
If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends. If you REALLY liked it, please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for watching or listening!
In this episode:
We review Bitcoin's new high, partially caused by Tesla's announcement that it had purchased $1.5 Billion in Bitcoin and the plan to accept the crypto currency for the purchase of its vehicles.
Meanwhile, more and more financial institutions are feeling the pressure of their customers to accept Bitcoin. Mastercard and BNY are the latest giants to go crypto.
Then we move on to talk about Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). In a nutshell, Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique, digital items with blockchain-managed ownership. Examples include collectibles, game items, digital art, event tickets, domain names, and even ownership records for physical assets. How they work, practical applications and more details.
Want more?
Subscribe to The Edge eComm Digest and receive weekly news directly in your INBOX >
Check our other stuff out too:
This episode is brought to you by MGR Agency. Scaling marketing for leading digital brands.
If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends. If you REALLY liked it, please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for watching or listening!
For digital marketers, dealing with Facebook or Google's "Learning" phase or period is a common event that, when managed correctly, could be very advantageous for all campaigns. But for the casual advertiser (read: the DIY type) dealing with the "Learning" phase is often a source of frustration. Today we discuss all aspects of the learning period, how to shorten it, what to do, what NOT to do, and a whole lot more!
But first, let's start with the official definitions by Facebook and Google.
Facebook’s definition: “After you create a new ad set or make a significant edit to an existing one, our system starts learning who to show ads to. This learning isn't a change to the way our system works, but we're showing the status to let you know when performance is still stabilizing.”
Google’s definition: “After you make a change to your bid strategy, it takes time for Google Ads to gather the performance data it needs to optimize your bids.”
Ok, so both, Facebook and Google need to learn about your campaign and your ads performance too. But How long does the learning period last? On Google Ads, the learning period typically lasts 7 days since the last significant edit to that campaign. On Facebook, the learning period will last until your ad set reaches 50 optimization events within a 7-day period since the last significant edit.
Basically, while Facebook requires a certain number of events or campaign actions to learn, Google requires a more specific timeframe. This makes sense since Facebook is serving ads to an audience that is NOT searching for anything, but simply browsing through their newsfeed or timeline, while Google is serving ads based on specific search "intent" or actions from its visitors.
Why is the learning period so critical?
Well, basically, both Facebook and Google Ads, are still doing a bit of 'shooting in the dark' so you can expect their accuracy in delivery and efficiency to be lower during this phase. As a result, your campaign's performance will be lower, your CPA will be higher and your conversion rate will be lower. Not good, but necessary.
Want more?
Subscribe to The Edge eComm Digest and receive weekly news directly in your INBOX >
Check our other stuff out too:
This episode is brought to you by MGR Agency. Scaling marketing for leading digital brands.
If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends. If you REALLY liked it, please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for watching or listening!
The podcast currently has 89 episodes available.