The Nomics Update

I think hiring is a multi-year ... a multi-year game. About half the people I ... we've hired at [Nomics 00:00:11] I've known ... oh, about a year. Some of them, two of them I knew for over a year before they were hired, and it's just so important, I think, as a CEO, to stay in contact [00:00:30] with people who are excellent at what they do. A lot of people try and stay in contact with thought leaders, or other CEOs, and ... you know, people with huge brand names. 

Those people are already bombarded. They have way too much to do. I think the highest ROI relationships to keep up are ones with just amazing operators in their space. I really believe that the biggest lessons I've learned as an entrepreneur [00:01:00] have been around what excellence looks like in different positions, and in different roles. 

And, until you've worked with an A-player ... any given role ... it's just hard to know what that looks like, specially in some of these roles that don't get a lot of attention, like finance leaders, sales leaders, design and product leaders, engineering leaders. 

Generally, the top people [00:01:30] on many of these roles don't have huge followings on Twitter. There's not a lot of social signaling around who they are, other than maybe companies that they've worked at in the past, maybe. And, the only way that they'll have ... for the most part, that they'll have really [fanty 00:01:47] past roles is if they've lived on the coast. Right? If they've lived in New York, or San Francisco; but other than that, those signals are often not there. 

But, [00:02:00] I think these are really important people to stay in touch with, so I just got off the phone with someone who we were looking at, at my last company, when we were looking to replace me as CEO. I went to the board, I said, “I think it's time to higher another CEO. This company ... you know. I feel really comfortable between 30 people to 80 people, or 100. Past that, I think I'm [00:02:30] a bit out of my league. We should hire someone,” and someone applied for that position, who I really think the world of. 

I think they're one of the best executives I've ever seen. Again, they don't have a huge following on Twitter. They don't have a huge personal brand, but holy crap, they're amazing operators, and I think they've been successful in every single role they've ever been in, ever. And so, [00:03:00] I stay in touch with them. 

I'd like them to be an advisor to the company, and so we're talking about that. I also, as a side note, stay in touch with the person that we hired for that role to replace me as CEO at my last company. He's an advisor to the company, we meet every month. I've learned so much from him, and have the utmost respect for him, as well. 

But, yeah, I [00:03:30] think staying in touch with the best operators in these often looked-over areas of a business. I think it's one of the highest ROI activities ever, as an entrepreneur, and I don't think it's done enough, because I just don't know a lot of people that do it; but those are the people that make the difference between really taking [00:04:00]

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Website: https://nomics.com

Crypto Market Data API: https://nomicsapi.com

Personal Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClayCollins

Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/NomicsFinance

We just turned on Brave verified publisher status on nomics.com and I'm kind of excited about it. I don't think it's going to, at least in the short term, result in any kind of real and meaningful short term value. But I really like the direction that the Brave browser is going in. It's almost at the point that I can start using it on a daily basis, even though it's not quite there yet. 

[00:00:30] I thought it was going to be there. I thought I was going to completely switch over to Brave. They did a lot of things that I think make a lot of sense. I think they've basically forked Chrome, at least the open sourced parts of Chrome, so you can create different workspaces and personas that have saved cookies and bookmarks. There's a state behind [00:01:00] each of these environments that you can switch in and out of, and that's cool. 

For the most part, I believe all Chrome plugins now work in the Brave browser, which is nice, so I can use my password manager and a bunch of other plugins for Chrome that I've become dependent upon, like those working in Brave, which is really nice. And it seems to be faster than Chrome [00:01:30] and it has a real emphasis on privacy which I like, and blocking third party cookies and on, and on, and on. They've done a really good job there, and I'm happy that we are now verified in Brave, or as a Brave publisher. 

There's a few things that didn't work. One, when I use Google Hangouts in the Brave browser, I can't seem to hear the person [00:02:00] on the other side. They can hear me, they can see me, I can see them, but I can't hear them. I've done a lot of Google Hangouts. I'm pretty sure that I have it configured correctly, but I can't seem to hear the person on the other line. 

The other issue, and I'm sure there's more, is that I can't seem to print to anything but PDF in the Brave browser. It doesn't connect to printers on my system for some reason. I have no idea. [00:02:30] Maybe if I spent a couple of hours screwing around with the stuff, I could get it to work. But these things don't work. 

But I'm really glad that there is a team that's focused on some of the UX components of distributed finance or this ... I don't know, whatever we call this space; the crypto-sphere. I think Brave has come a long way. It does look like they took out the MetaMask wallet, or the native MetaMask wallet. [00:03:00] But it's really come a long way. I'm happy that we have it turned on. If you are a user of the Brave browser, and you want to donate to nomics.com, we would obviously, obviously welcome that. But we're not looking at it to be a huge source of revenue. Maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised. I don't know. 

But it's cool to see something come along that operates this well. Generally speaking, when I go [00:03:30] to a website and they tell me that I need to have MetaMask installed, I'm just like, "No. No, I'm just going to move on." Because the UI there is just so clunky and I wish it could get a lot better. I really do. Anyway, that's the update for today. Take care. Bye. 

[transcript truncated due to character count restrictions]

Website: https://nomics.com

Crypto Market Data API: https://nomicsapi.com

Personal Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClayCollins

Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/NomicsFinance

At the end of last week, I decided that I am no longer doing meet and greet phone calls or I don't know even calls that feel like they're going to be meet and greet phone calls. When someone says they want to do a meet and greet, the answer is just no. But recently, I've been hit up with a bunch of different people reaching out who won't actually say they want to do a meet and greet [00:00:30] phone call. They'll disguise it as something else. I had someone reach out and say they wanted to sponsor the podcast. As soon as I got on they said that they'd be interested in sponsoring a few months out, but they just wanted to talk to me, and then they pitched me on being on the [inaudible 00:00:47] podcast and that was the podcast they were going to sponsor. But it really felt deceitful, frankly, and [00:01:00] they come in with hey I'd like to sponsor, but then it's three months out and we have to figure out what our budget is. Yadi, yadi, yada. That is not cool, people. That is not cool. Please do not do that. Not to me. Not to anyone else. You're just wasting time. 

I also had someone reach out. It was a journalist, and they said they wanted to talk, and when I got on the phone they said they were exploring different ideas for articles for something they're going to write [00:01:30] about three months out. It's always about three months. I don't know why, and they wanted to hear about Nomics. They're like just tell me more about Nomics. What are you doing? They were actually a journalist. They seemed legit. But that also was a complete waste of time. 

I think there's a lot of people with far too much time on their hands who when they don't feel like they're making progress or when they want to create for themselves the illusion that they're making progress on a given day. [00:02:00] They just want to talk to people, right? They like to hang out in telegram groups and talk on communities and debate various things and get on the phone with each other and talk about these things as well. They need a lot of social reinforcement around what they're doing. 

I'm getting better, for the most part, at filtering through these things. One of the key words I've found [00:02:30] around people who are likely going to waste my time is that they use the phrase "learn more". It might be a VC who reaches out and says something to the effect of, "I like what you're doing. It seems interesting. Let's get on the phone. I'd like to learn more." It's like what motivation do I have to educate you on our market and what we're doing just so that you can learn more? Are you really not going to offer anything of concrete value to me? 

The same on the sales front. Someone will reach out and try and sell me something, [00:03:00] and they'll say, "Hey. Here's what we do. I'd really like to get on the phone. Are you interested in learning more?" I don't what it is about the phrase "learn more" that is just this huge indicator that there's absolutely going to be no value transfer. 

I've started de-escalating these requests. If I don't know the person, I'll just ask for an email. On the bus dev [00:03:30]

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Website: https://nomics.com

Crypto Market Data API: https://nomicsapi.com

Personal Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClayCollins

Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/NomicsFinance

For the most part, I've been sharing general business advice on this podcast, and I really, really, really want that to change. For one, I don't know that I'm a general advice kind of person or an advice kind of persona at all. So what I've been sharing is not what I think is the right way to build a company. I think it's just how we're building a company, and a lot of this is influenced by my past experiences and [00:00:30] successes and also mistakes. I think general business advice starts veering into the category of thought leadership, and I'm also not a fan of thought leadership. One of my favorite things to say is that a leader is kind of like a thought leader except they actually get stuff done, and even when it comes to 'wrong' ways to build a business, [00:01:00] there are plenty of people who build a business the wrong way and still manage to have enormous success. 

So yeah. So I really I guess my journal entry today is just to note that I want to be sharing more about the specific things we're doing at Nomics, but there's a lot that I just can't share yet. I definitely had the experience in the past of [00:01:30] walking other through exactly what I've done in the market to have success and then seeing that copied. And I'm okay with that as long as enough of emote has been built up and as long as enough time has passed. And we're starting to see some real success at Nomics that I'm proud of, but enough time just hasn't passed yet. And I'm [00:02:00] kind of itching to share it. For one, I want to brag. For one, I want to brag. 

But I guess another piece of this is I just think there's a lot of things to learn about the space that we're in, cryptocurrency, market data, data companies, data platforms. And so I'm really looking forward to sharing some of our findings, some of our learnings, some of our [00:02:30] wins and also some of the things that I think are other people work that absolutely don't work. But, again, not enough time has passed for us to have a true mote there yet. So I'm just waiting for that to develop. 

So the message today is just that I am itching to share more. I'm itching to share more than just ideas and general thoughts on product and building an org. [00:03:00] But I also think that as I go about documenting what we're doing here and 'working' in public, whatever that means. There's a lot of people that talk about working in public or building a company in public, and I think that's just code for content marketing. And it can be really great content marketing, and it can help other people like join in the journey that you're having. I think a lot of the best marketing makes your listeners protagonists [00:03:30] or participants in the story about the development of your company, right? But it's just too early to share more details. Just know that they're coming, that I want to share them, that it's for the most part not in my nature to go so general on so many things. I hope you're enjoying this nonetheless. But stay tuned. Details are coming. They're forthcoming.

All right. Bye.

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Website: https://nomics.com

Crypto Market Data API: https://nomicsapi.com

Personal Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClayCollins

Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/NomicsFinance

I think it's dangerous for companies to become obsessed with consistency. I think there's a time and a place for consistency, and I'm not talking about consistency of execution, I'm talking about consistency of content. Of course, consistency of execution is important, being a consistent person, doing what you say you're going to do. All that stuff [00:00:30] is of upmost important. But when I talk about consistency in this podcast, I'm talking about consistency from a product and perhaps even a content perspective. 

I think one mistake that junior product managers make is they can be obsessed with consistency, and, in fact, in a lot of new product managers will come in and say, "I'm going [00:01:00] to make this new thing, and it's going to be consistent with that thing." And my primary job here once I started is to create consistency across our product or across our app, and there's nothing wrong inherently with consistency. But I think when that becomes the highest form of inspiration, problems can occur, right? When people stop [00:01:30] thinking about new ways to do things, when they stop asking questions like what does the user really want here, sometimes that can create situations where a new aspects of an app are in some ways highly inconsistent with past things. And maybe it's the older parts of the app that need to be made consistent with the new parts, or maybe it depends on your market [00:02:00] and your user group and who your customers are and why they bought your product. But maybe it's okay that there's inconsistency. Maybe as you build out the first version of your product, there are parts of what you're doing that are inconsistent with past parts. And that's okay. It's the first coat of paint, and when you go to put a second coat of paint on, maybe you can create consistency if that's the right thing to do.

But [00:02:30] I think there is sometimes within organizations this faith in what existed before they were around, and I think that's not only true of companies or products, I think it's true culturally. I think about a lot of religions where ... [00:03:00] So I'm not a religious person. But I've definitely seen ... But I grew up in a religious culture, and there's this tendency to not question the things that we're around before someone was born, right? So you can think about things like, I don't know, the birth of Jesus, right? If someone came around today saying the types of things that Jesus said or any other religious prophet or figure, most people would [00:03:30] discount them, right? But because these things, Jesus and others, existed before someone was born, it has a certain amount of weight. 

And I definitely see this in startups where a cohort of people will come into an organization, and they accept it almost faith value or at face value what was done prior to their arrival. But everything done since their arrival is subject to [00:04:00] a huge amount of scrutiny and there's this desire to create consistency with what's always been there. And I think a danger for companies is that a whole bunch of people get hired or enough people get hired that bring up consistency concerns at every meeting that you create this organization that it's like this consistency creating machine that everything that's done is pulled into this [00:04:30]

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Website: https://nomics.com

Crypto Market Data API: https://nomicsapi.com

Personal Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClayCollins

Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/NomicsFinance

My thinking, over the years, on hiring freelancers and other people with nonpermanent status has really changed a lot over time. I used to be of the opinion that I wanted to hire lifers, people who are in it for the long haul, people who could develop deep company knowledge and really kind [00:00:30] of be there forever. I still want to hire folks with some of those attributes. There's nothing wrong with that. I think was has changed is this staunch anti-freelancer or anti-contractor approach, and there's a few things that kind of changed my mind. 

I think the first is that hiring freelancers is a really great way to run experiments. They might [00:01:00] be more expensive per hour, but there are definitely people with highly-developed skillsets that have developed those skillsets over long periods of time that are staunchly committed to being contractors. They like it for a variety of lifestyle or other reasons, and they've developed deep expertise. You can hire them fairly quickly to [00:01:30] work on really important things in your business and test them out. 

When you test them out, you don't have to permanently commit to spending a certain amount of money per year. You don't have to invest in recruiting like you otherwise would. You don't have to invest in health insurance, but most importantly, you can pivot. If you run an experiment and it works, then perhaps you double down on that experiment or you decide to scale it, and that [00:02:00] might involve hiring someone full time, but if it doesn't work, you can just part ways when that makes sense and kind of within the terms of the contract you've established.

When it comes from everything to branding to SEO to writing to all kinds of different tasks, I think now I'm much more likely to hire a freelancer to test and [00:02:30] see if that works. Often, the freelancer won't be right, but the basic idea of what were attempting is right, and hiring that freelancer really allowed us to evolve our idea of what we need in a given position. It could be that our initial thoughts on the skillset or consolation of skills that would be required to create wins, that our initial idea of that was completely wrong, [00:03:00] and hiring a freelancer allows us to realize that. Then we can hire another freelancer and see if we nail it. 

Then, if that works, maybe we move to a full-time position or maybe, and this often happens, that the freelancer does bring a lot of success, but they bring success around something that only needed to be executed once over a period of three months, or with a lot of marketing things, someone [00:03:30] can bring success and then, over the course of six to eight months, that traffic opportunity or that advertising opportunity or that paid media opportunity kind of the ship has sailed on making that work because the economics of ad buying changed or competition in the space heated up, and there's no longer an opportunity there. 

Yeah, so my thoughts have really changed on this. I've also found that [00:04:00] there are some people that are so good at what they do that it's near impossible for a company of our size to hire them as full-time employees, but it's absolutely possible to hire them as freelancers, whether they're for-hire CFOs that have advanced skillsets in a given area or what have you. My tune has really changed here. I used to be [00:04:30]

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Website: https://nomics.com

Crypto Market Data API: https://nomicsapi.com

Personal Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClayCollins

Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/NomicsFinance

So, I'm looking for an executive assistant, and I just want to put this out there. It's not a mad dash to hire someone. I'm not going to be hiring a recruiter. Yeah, I'm not going to be hiring a recruiter or running a strict process. I think it's the kind of thing where, when I find the right person, [00:00:30] it'll just happen. There are definitely hires that we make where we're running a process and we're shooting for a date. This hire is not like this. 

Yeah, so what's the predicament that I'm in, that's leading me to want to make this hire? I think the reality is that we've decided to build our company in a specific [00:01:00] way. There's five of us, and I'm the only one who's not a full-time maker. There's three engineers, one front end developer slash graphic designer, who's our creative director, and then there's me, and I really want the rest of the team focused on building and making our product. [00:01:30] That means banking, HR stuff, interfacing with lawyers, sales, customer support. I mean, we share customer support, communication with the outside world, doing webinars, content marketing, marketing in general. Everything that's not related to building the product is falling [00:02:00] on me, and I need help. 

The truth is that I don't really need help in quotes, and there's lots of people that will offer to help you. The truth is that I don't even have time for assistants, you know, for someone to assist me, because when someone's assisting you, it implies that you're doing it too, right? I've got two toddlers, and I'll say to them, " [00:02:30] Hey, I'm going to help you clean this room, or can you help me?" So I don't want someone to amplify what I'm doing. I want someone who truly is ... someone operates at a very high level, that can take entire functions of the business and just handle them with without [00:03:00] a ton of instructions. Right? I can just kind of describe the outcome I'm looking for, and they make it happen. They've got great judgment, and they can operate pretty independently, right? 

This is not a great position for someone who wants to mirror me or shadow me. If someone wants to learn from me directly, [00:03:30] this isn't a good position for that. What I do know is that there's a lot of writing that needs to be done. It doesn't make sense to hire a full-time writer just yet, who's just going to write. There's a lot of processes and organization that needs to be created, but we don't have to have enough to do to just hire a full time process person. 

Whoever we hire [00:04:00] needs to be a lover of new technology, new software. We have so much interesting technology that we use on so many fronts, security, organizational stuff, communication stuff. I think we do a lot of nonstandard things, and we're early adopters of communications technology. It can't be the thing where I'm like customer support for whoever's hired [00:04:30] on how this stuff works.

They also need to be passionate about business growth. I think the mistake that a lot of executive assistants make is that they think their job is to respond to everyone, and that's a real problem, right? Then you've just hired someone [00:05:00]

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Website: https://nomics.com

Crypto Market Data API: https://nomicsapi.com

Personal Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClayCollins

Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/NomicsFinance

One of my favorite blog posts is on the AVC.com blog. It came out in 2010. It's called What A CEO Does. This is on Fred Wilson's blog. In this blog post, it's pretty short, but it's incredibly powerful. In this blog post, Fred Wilson describes being on a board with another VC and [00:00:30] a search at that board was doing for a CEO of a portfolio company, right? They're looking to hire a new CEO. Fred, I think he was a junior VC at that time, certainly didn't have the experience that he has now, but Fred turned to the more experienced VC as described in this blog post and said, "What does a CEO do? We're looking to hire this position. [00:01:00] What are the foundational aspects of this person's job that we're hiring for?" 

As Fred tells the story, the senior VC on the board replied or answered without thinking. He said, "A CEO only does three things." Oh, it's my wife calling. I'll call her right back. Fred responded that a CEO does three things. One, [00:01:30] sets the overall vision and strategy for the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Two, recruits, hires and retains the very best talent for the company. Three, make sure there's always enough cash in the bank. In the story, Fred said, "Is that really it?" The senior VC said that the CEO should be delegating everything else in the business. I think that's right. [00:02:00] I really agree with this. 

There's three jobs, make sure there's money in the bank, make sure the company is making good hires, and three, communicates the vision, right? Investors, employees, customers, the market, etcetera. I've been thinking about this a lot and I really think that of those three things, communicating the vision is the most important one. Because when you [00:02:30] communicate the vision frequently and perhaps in a one too many fashion, right, through blog posts, through podcasts, through all hands meetings of the company, when you tell lots of stories, you'll make good hires. You really will. 

At least it helps a lot when you're making good hires, especially if a lot of the communicating the vision is also to the press, if [00:03:00] you can get it. You'll make good hires and you'll tend to have money in the bank, right? Because customers will listen to this. Customers will listen to the communication of the vision. I think kind of at the top of the food chain, this three item food chain, is communicating the vision. Something I've been doing [00:03:30] five days a week, I try and do it every weekday, but sometimes in order to hit my number here, I got to do it on the weekends, but something I've been doing is sending a daily audio note to the company about different things that are going on. 

I call it the B Cast. I have a channel that it goes out on. I think that's been really helpful. I've gotten some good feedback on it, but I think it's always important [00:04:00] for CEOs to be communicating. That's part of why I do this podcast everyday. It's part of why I do the daily "podcast" of the company. It's not really a podcast, but it's important. I've seen this trend recently. It's not recent. I've seen this trend for a long time of CEOs [00:04:30]

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Website: https://nomics.com

Crypto Market Data API: https://nomicsapi.com

Personal Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClayCollins

Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/NomicsFinance

So, I was reading this article in the New York Times about Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi, and how Donald Trump has never had to really go up against someone like Nancy Pelosi in business negotiations before. And why he's being a bit, you know, he's been frustrated by that. And someone in the article, someone quoted in the article, "The art of war." So, there's this ancient [00:00:30] Chinese book by a man name Sun Tzu. So, I'm not a fan of war, but I am a fan of strategy and so this is a book about war strategy and a lot of people have used it to draw analogies to business strategy. In any kind of like zero sum adversarial strategy in general. There's a lot of takeaways that you can take from this book. 

                    So anyway, someone in this article was quoting Sun Tzu and the quote [00:01:00] that they read was this, here's the quote. "Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win." And this quote reminded me a lot about the things I'd like to do differently and the things that I think I am doing differently as a second time entrepreneur. So, I think a lot of [00:01:30] entrepreneurs are like, they start a business, and they raise funds, and they are basically executing with the hopes of winning, right? So, they'll raise money and the belief is that this money that they've raised is a lottery ticket and it basically allows them to enter the game to play the game. [00:02:00] And maybe they'll win, maybe they'll lose. And at best the money that they've raised they believe increases their likelihood of winning. And, I think that's a bad way to think about venture capital or any kind of investment, or business in general. 

                    I think the best entrepreneurs when they do raise money, or deploy capital, or invest in anything as a business, they are [00:02:30] deploying capital against a strategy that they've proven that they can execute against. And, they're deploying capital so that they can scale what is already winning, right? They're deploying capital to scale what is already working and how does this relate to business strategy, or entrepreneurship, or building a product company? I think for me [00:03:00] the biggest way that this comes into play is around product market fit and around engineering. So, a lot of companies spend a lot of money compensating for lack of product market fit, or compensating for not having a sticky product, not having a product that sells itself. Not having a product that goes viral, [00:03:30] et cetera. And so, they'll do a lot of things like, buy ads on AdWords, or hire a bunch of salespeople, or go to a bunch of conferences and buy booths, and they're doing all these things because they believe that they can deploy capital to increase the [00:04:00]

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Website: https://nomics.com

Crypto Market Data API: https://nomicsapi.com

Personal Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClayCollins

Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/NomicsFinance

Hey how's it going? I hope you're having a great day, a fantastic day wherever you are. So, I have been asked this a few times. I though I'd answer it here. What do I think of the current state of bear market and when are we going to recover? So, I went through this a little bit in 2013, 2014. During that time Bitcoin spiked to ... at the end of 2013 it spiked to around $1200 and then it crashed again to, [00:00:30] I don't know, $100, $200, $300 and fluctuated around there for a long time. Then it took all of 2014, all of 2015 all of 2016 and into the first quarter of 2017 to see 1200 again. So three whole years. Then it spiked, went to 20K. Then we crashed again [00:01:00] at the beginning of 2018. I really think it could be all of 2018, 2019 and all of 2020 and then at the beginning of 2021 it might spike again. So yeah, I think it's probably until beginning of 2021 until we see the kinds of prices that we saw at the end of 2017, but that doesn't mean there is not lots of opportunity. I think it's gonna go up during that time. 

In my opinion, this is all [00:01:30] for educational purposes only, I just don't think we'll see 20, 21K etc until then. Then I think once it hits 20, I think we could see another 2017 in 2021. So if you are a trader and you have experience and or like trading during markets that are going sideways, you benefit from the ups and downs and you know how to make that work for you, I think you're gonna see a pretty good time here [00:02:00] in the next few years. All right, so that is my hot take. Again, this is not financial advice. This is for entertainment purposes only. Please, please, please, do not make any decisions whatsoever based on my thoughts. All right take care. Bye. 

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Website: https://nomics.com

Crypto Market Data API: https://nomicsapi.com

Personal Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClayCollins

Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/NomicsFinance