Best of Web Special on All Things Crypto, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Web3, NFTs, Metaverse, Cryptocurrencies, Scams

Today’s post is a collection of articles I have found that deal exclusively with all things crypto, blockchain, Bitcoin, Web3, NFTs, metaverse, cryptocurrencies, scams and more! Intended to educate and give you some food for thought on whether you should jump aboard this train or not. If you are a crypto bro, I think you do not belong here but if you want to enlighten me without insults and telling me to “do my homework”, you should know that I am always open to learning more while challenging my beliefs and biases. You all have a great week!

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Switching things up here in my blog by doing a special on all things crypto, blockchain, bitcoin, web3, NFTs, metaverse and stuff like that, enjoy!

Where do I stand? Well, you may have figured it out by now that I am not a fan. And I have been told numerous times to do my research lol. Do I wish I had invested back in the day when some dude used it to pay for pizza? Of course. But, at the same time, I have not lost anything so no harm was inflicted either. I just never understood how a dude nobody knows named Satoshi Nakamoto came up with this thing and there is a finite number of coins and it will all be decentralized and change the world blah blah blah. In the meantime, it has attracted a ridiculously long list of shady greedy characters and they are all in apparently cheering everyone one up so they can unload to the next sucker who falls for non relenting pumping schemes. Don’t get me started about all the frauds/ransomware/hacks happening daily in this area…And horrific environmental implications. And governments now working on their own digital coins while the crypto bros are still trying to come up with an actual use for this “amazing” technology. Other than frauds/ransomware/hacks of course. And please don’t get me started on the NFTs! I can imagine my imaginary grandchild one day saying “Hey Grandpa, back in your day people were paying millions for a picture of a bored ape, WTF?”. At the same time, after 13 years it appears it may still be too early that this technology has yet to find its footing. It still might, I don’t know. Be careful out there!

My own commentary in the excerpted test is in [brackets].

 

The SEC’s Former Head of Internet Enforcement Fears How the Crypto Story Ends

Must read interview of a former regulator who speaks his mind now that he is retired.

“There have been awful frauds from unregulated people and regulated people,” Stark said. “But nothing comes close to the level of fraud in all these Web3 applications.”

You’ve written that the law prohibits anonymity in financial transactions as well. Is there a version of sort of the crypto world or NFTs that you could get behind?
No, I don’t. When I was chief of the Office of Internet Enforcement, I could see how wonderful the internet was and how many amazing things were gonna happen. We just needed to clear up the crime so it could flourish. You can’t see that with blockchain. 

Blockchain is supposed to be some kind of incredible technology that’s gonna transform the world. Blockchain is a glorified spreadsheet. If you think this is going to make the supply chain problems disappear, have at it. But don’t use it as a currency. As a means of currency, I don’t see a single societal benefit. I don’t see a single way that somehow this will work. 

Can you understand why crypto has become so successful?
People can be vulnerable to get-rich-quick schemes. They always have been. And in the end, how can you sum Web3, NFT, DeFi, and crypto? It’s one big giant get-rich-quick scheme. That’s why it appeals to people. Some of them might say we’re going to use this half of the proceeds to cure cancer or to make neighborhoods better. But the bottom line is, people are investing because they think there’ll be some greater fool to pay more than they paid.

One of the things that’s been notable about these companies in recent months is the amount that seems to be going into marketing. They were dominant during the Super Bowl and we saw Matt Damon pushing Crypto.com. Considering your experience, what role does that sort of high level of marketing play?
It’s awful and really unsettling. And I find it so insulting. When you watch Paris Hilton talking to Jimmy Fallon—I mean, who doesn’t like Jimmy Fallon? But all of a sudden, I just have no respect for Jimmy Fallon. To watch Paris Hilton, and he puts up his picture of his ape with a funny hat and glasses, and she’s like, “Oh, wow, I really like what you’ve done with the hat and glasses.” It’s nauseating. I just feel like, have you no shame? It’s all in plain view.

I hear some of these shysters saying, “Wow, this is a great thing because it allows the disenfranchised and the poor and the people who can’t get credit to participate in the financial marketplace for the first time because it’s so democratic.” That couldn’t be further from the truth. They’re manipulating people. The people left holding the bag will be the least able to afford that kind of loss. And that’s what really is the most disheartening of all of it.

I love this guy, let’s continue with this theme next…

 

Cryptocurrency Is a Giant Ponzi Scheme

Must read vicious accusations ending with “Ban Them All”. I agree by the way.

The majority of cryptocurrency mining is now conducted in commercial mining farms, essentially huge warehouses running thousands of high-powered computer processors day and night. The electricity expended mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is rapidly approaching 1 percent of global usage, which is famously greater than the total electricity consumption of many smaller developed nations.

Given that cryptocurrencies don’t produce anything of material value, this enormous waste of resources renders the whole enterprise a negative-sum game. Investors can only cash out by selling their coins to other investors — but only after the miners and various cryptocurrency service providers take the house’s rake. In other words, investors cannot — in the aggregate — cash out for even what they put in, as cryptocurrencies are inefficient by design.

This makes them a poor and costly form of currency and absolutely ludicrous as a long-term investment. We could dismiss them as a doomed experiment in the “greater fool” theory of investing, in which investors attempt to profit on overvalued or even worthless assets by selling them on to the next “greater fool” — think of it as gambling on a high-stakes game of musical chairs — if the rising price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were simply a function of demand.

This can’t go on forever. Unbacked stablecoins can and are being used to inflate the “spot price” — the latest trading price — of cryptocurrencies to levels totally disconnected from reality. But the electricity costs of running and securing blockchains is very real. If cryptocurrency markets cannot keep luring in enough new money to cover the growing costs of mining, the scheme will become unworkable and financially insolvent.

In the case of cryptocurrency, regulation is an existential risk precisely because regulatory loopholes and fraud are the only reason the industry appears profitable despite being wholly unproductive and a waste of energy resources. The same applies to private cryptocurrencies as a whole. The longer governments take to ban them, the worse normal people will be hurt.

 

A Woman Accused Of A $4.5 Billion Cryptocurrency Laundering Scheme Has Moonlighted As A Rapper And Forbes Writer

One of the reasons this area just turns me off is because of so many ridiculous characters. Like this woman and her husband. And I hope the recent trend to making Netflix specials about fraudsters stops because it is even more ridiculous, why glorify them? Oh wait, ratings… 🙁

If you see any of her rap videos you may vomit, you have been warned!

In case you have not heard about this yet, this is what it is about:

A husband and wife were arrested in Manhattan on Tuesday for allegedly conspiring to launder $4.5 billion in stolen cryptocurrency. In an announcement, the Department of Justice called its confiscation of 94,000 bitcoins, which amounts to $3.6 billion, the agency’s “largest financial seize ever.” The department named Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan as the individuals responsible for allegedly attempting to launder 119,754 bitcoin stolen from the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex.

On Twitter, Morgan allegedly identified herself as a “serial entrepreneur,” “surreal artist,” “rapper,” and “also Forbes writer.” Indeed, a Forbes contributor page for Heather R Morgan lists numerous posts, including a story titled “Experts Share Tips to Protect Your Business From Cybercriminals.” Morgan also appears to have written for Inc. [ smh to oblivion…]

More details about the story that came out later…it all came crushing down when they attempted to access some of their money using a $500 gift card at Walmart, per this Wall Street Journal investigative story: A Crucial Clue in the $4.5 Billion Bitcoin Heist: A $500 Walmart Gift Card.

 

The Crypto Backlash Is Booming

Certainly seeing that lately…

The pandemic changed the way Americans think about scams. A few years ago, when Donald Trump was in office and the Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was awaiting trial, grifting seemed to be the default mode of conduct in a society built on self-interest…We were tickled by scams, found ourselves begrudgingly awed by them, and indulged a morbid curiosity in their inner workings. But somehow, the relentless misery and staggeringly unequal outcomes of the past two years have brought an unexpected correction to this mindset. A new exasperation has taken hold around the billionaires, out-of-touch celebrities, and dubiously talented influencers who couldn’t find it in themselves to act in good taste while others were suffering, and who were insulated from the worst of the pandemic by the money that kept rolling in. Calls rang out for crackdowns on all the liars, hypocrites, and opportunists exploiting desperation.

 

tante’s Blockchain/Web3 FAQ

This is an excellent collection of answers to some fairly common questions about this subject. Must bookmark and purely educational. Most importantly, it is in layman terms.

What is the relationship between blockchain, cryptocurrency and NFT?

A blockchain is a decentralized, append-only database. Blockchains traditionally define their own currency to reward those who do the necessary work to run the network: Validating blocks. Aside from the currency a blockchain can – through smart contracts – define tokens. These tokens can be traded between wallets on the blockchain just like the currency. NFTs are just a special kind of token that can’t be duplicated or split up.

 

The spectacular risk of cryptocurrency investing

Personally, I don’t like to watch the bitcoin price and want to enjoy my weekends. Since they trade 24/7, if you invested on Friday afternoon…you may wake up on Saturday morning and your breakfast is ruined…and so is your weekend. And then what are you gonna do Monday? The volatility is a huge turn off and it goes both ways of course. Good luck HODLing! Anyway, a few excerpts to think about:

The “proof of work” system used by both bitcoin and ethereum to create new coins and validate transactions eats up roughly 109 terawatt-hours for ethereum and 204 terawatt-hours per year for bitcoin — or about what the Netherlands and South Africa use, respectively.

Major powers around the world are also cottoning onto the fact that the crypto craze is badly exacerbating the computer chip shortage, and thence the shortage of cars, appliances, consumer electronics, and everything else that needs chips, and thence the inflation that is deeply unpopular among voting citizens. Regulations are likely coming in both the United States and Europe that would address the absolute bonanza of scams and frauds in crypto, the resulting systemic financial risk, and also free up capacity at semiconductor fabs for real industries.

It’s worth emphasizing that all that electricity and all those computer chips are being used up to do things that are explicitly pointless. The entire idea is to force crypto participants to expend useless effort to make it difficult to attack the system (something that is already accomplished quite well on the internet). Here we have the fire of the gods — a fundamental force of physics harnessed to do the bidding of humanity — being created in unimaginable quantities by burning the dirtiest fuel available. And here we have that power driving some of the most sophisticated objects ever made, wearing them out by the train car-load in order to … guess random numbers a quadrillion times a second. The waste, pollution, and damage to the climate are beyond nightmarish. It’s as if there were a trillion-dollar baseball card or Beanie Babies collecting frenzy, but every time you wanted to create, trade, or sell one, you had to throw an entire litter of kittens into a wood chipper. [Yeah….so much waste!]

Cryptocurrencies, by contrast, are imaginary computer funny money with operations that are totally incomprehensible to the layman and a substantial portion of the crypto enthusiast base alike. As Dan Olson argues in a brilliant investigation of the cryptocurrency and NFT space, crypto is not good at anything it sets out to do. As the wildly gyrating value shows today, it is not a good store of value. It is a horrendous medium of exchange: It’s very slow compared to the dollar payments system and dramatically more expensive, with just one transaction costing at least a few bucks and up to hundreds of dollars, depending on conditions. Finally, crypto is exceptionally vulnerable to most kinds of hacking, because it’s virtually impossible to reverse a transaction on the blockchain, and most lack elementary security features other services take for granted. For instance, you can “airdrop” a malware NFT into certain kinds of ethereum wallets without needing permission, and if its owner ever clicks on it, you will receive all the contents of the wallet immediately.

 

Celebrities and NFTs Are a Match Made in Hell

And you thought Tom Selleck selling reverse mortgages on late night cable TV was bad…

And then Matt Damon implied that Superbowl viewers are sissies if they did not invest in crypto at crypto.com. Okay, he got paid a lot of money I get it. But then this exchange between Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon really triggered many people, including me. First, I am boycotting Fallon’s show. Not like I ever watched because I am sleeping at that time lol.

Even if an NFT-owning celebrity has no financial stake in any of the companies battling it out in the crypto market, they have a clear stake in NFTs as a concept. When you buy one of these tokens, you aren’t buying ownership of the original artwork—the images are publicly viewable (and right-click downloadable) by anyone on the internet, and the original artists retain their rights to publish or reproduce the work itself. What NFT owners get is a new type of speculative asset, and for growth, they need the investment dollars of the general public to flood in after them. “Just as the pork-futures commodity trader is not principally interested in taking delivery of pig meat, so the NFT trader is not necessarily concerned with the usefulness or even the symbolic value of an ape,” my colleague Ian Bogost wrote recently. When Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon make dead-eyed conversation with each other on national television about how cool Bored Apes are, it comes with the very real likelihood that doing so will increase the value of their investment by recruiting new money. When NFTs break contain, NFT holders profit.

Watching two millionaires promote a mechanism of passive wealth accumulation while they unconvincingly pretend to be interested in “art” or “community” is viscerally revolting. Even Hilton and Fallon seem to be exhausted by going through the motions of revenue-creation in this particularly vacuous way. [What also gets me is that wannabees full of  FOMO are doing all the work to learn about this area with the pretense to doing it for charity…maybe just give to the charity in secret and STFU?]

If Hilton and Fallon and their celebrity friends are going to go out there and pump-and-dump their way to additional wealth, they could at least do the rest of us the courtesy of being a little more discreet about it. Instead, they sound like they think this is stupid, and like they think the rest of us might be stupid enough to buy in. [Very similar to “travel” bloggers always so excited telling you 69 things they love about every travel rewards credit card they earn a sales commission on…JUST DO NOT BUY FROM THEM!]

 

The internet turned “money” into a hobby

I am afraid this is not going to end well for many people…

The gamification of money, and the blurring boundaries between what constitutes investing and what constitutes entertainment, have raised plenty of concerns, and many argue that the government is too far behind the times to adequately address it. “Gambling went from being something that was super taboo to being easier than ordering food on Uber Eats,” says Josh Clayton, a 29-year-old copywriter in Brooklyn. “You watch a sports game and every commercial is an ad for sports betting.” [These ads are everywhere…I even thought about taking some of that free money. But then I thought about my relative who ruined his life, gambling addiction is a disease!]

The concentration of bitcoin wealth is 100 times that of the US economy: The top 0.01 percent control 27 percent of the 19 million bitcoin currently in circulation. [Tell that to all the crypto fan boys and girls doing it for the unbanked little guy smh]

 

Don’t Listen to the Matt Damon Crypto Ad

For the record, I never liked Matt Damon!

Lizzie O’Leary: Why are we seeing so many celebrities endorsing cryptocurrency?

Ben McKenzie: What makes it work? Money. The same thing that always makes it work: money, real money. You have PR firms who reach out to agents and reps and money gets negotiated, and we’re talking big money. I mean, a $100 million ad campaign for Crypto.com. I don’t know what Damon got paid, but it’s obviously millions of dollars.

Are you frustrated with this?

McKenzie: I’m disappointed that they’re taking money to do something like this when, if you talk to a financial expert, is this the advice they’re giving you? To shill for these companies? And is it worth it?

Why are celebrities usually so conservative about this? Well, because they have a brand to protect, they have an image to protect, right? From the celebrities’ standpoint, I just think we need to reflect upon what we’re doing. We do have some obligation, and wouldn’t you feel bad if your fans lost money because you gave them bad financial advice?

You guys called this a moral disaster back in October. Jacob, tell me why?

Silverman: These folks are essentially leading their fans into the casino to gamble. People know that there are risks, but the risks are often unknown, and so are the rules by which you’re gambling. It’s often marketed to you as an investment with almost no downside and a new possibility to get rich. There’s so much salesmanship and so much money here and also so few incentives to really be honest, no matter where you are in this ecosystem, because everyone is just hoping that you’re able to cash out at the top. The price of these assets is pretty much driven by FOMO and trending topics and virality and no real economic fundamentals underneath. All of that combines with the big celebrity imprimatur to drive these very volatile prices.

 

The Internet Is Just Investment Banking Now

Let’s make one thing clear first:

Owning an NFT doesn’t confer any rights in the intellectual property underlying the thing owned, which anybody can download for themselves. Those who purchase NFTs end up with nothing but a digital record—the deed for a thing that can be copied at zero cost, with zero repercussions.

And brace yourselves:

Forget the hype around all things crypto. Set aside, for a moment, whether it makes sense to spend a fortune on an ape picture. Those matters are distractions. Let’s call things what they are: NFTs represent a first step in the securitization of digital assets. They turn digital data into speculative financial instruments. That shift has enormous implications because computers are in everything, and that makes anything a digital asset—your bank records, your Fitbit data, rings of your smart doorbell, a sentiment analysis of your work email, you name it. First the internet made it easy for people to conduct their lives online. Then it made it possible to monetize the attention generated by that online life. Now the digital exhaust of all that life online is poised to become an asset class for speculative investment, like stocks and commodities and mortgages. NFTs might burn out, the crypto-collectible equivalent of Beanie Babies. But the more likely scenario is weirder and scarier: a securities market for digital data. Financiers, who previously turned everything, whether loans or hurricanes or payroll data, into bets, will likely go to town on all this fodder. But ordinary people may also become fledgling financiers of their—or others’—computer records. It is, in a way, the most honest turn of the internet epoch. From the start, online businesses have presented themselves as making culture, even as they really aimed to build financial value.

Then the article takes us through the Web1 and Web2 eras and here we go Web3…

Web3, the nascent third age of the internet, represents a turn away from Web2’s goody-goody idealism and back toward Wall Street’s brazen greed. Sure, some hints of the old content-expression-oriented web have stuck around; some NFT creators have found a way to make some good money from their art, even if the gold rush might not last. But overall, the tech founders who are building crypto platforms and tools, like the users who are buying and trading blockchain assets, are trying to produce wealth via rapidly appreciating speculative value.

Whether Web3 really ends up being decentralized might not really matter, so long as enough people believe in the speculative value it purports to create.

As that value continues to accrue, and Web3 grows in scope and influence, it would be prudent to reflect on the history of securitization in the financial markets. In short, things got only weirder: first corporate ownership, then debt, then mortgages, then weather, then Bob Dylan. Today, digital art makes up the collateral of most NFTs—pictures, music, sometimes even little software programs that run on the blockchain itself. Others are even more bizarre: NFTs of colors, of national parks, of stars (like, in the sky), of references to recorded songs, of derivatives of evidence of consumed chicken wings.

What if that’s just the beginning? There’s almost nothing that exists today that doesn’t also have a digital shadow side—each tweet and text message you send, and every photograph and email. But also: all of the banking transactions you carry out, each phrase you dictate to Alexa, each scan of a UPS package en route to your door, every record of a COVID-19 PCR test in your Labcorp account, every bucket of wings you DoorDashed. Everything we possess or do is digital or can be represented digitally. Even things that aren’t yours, or anyone’s, can be captured as conceptual collateral thanks to digitization. A group of Olive Garden fanatics started selling NFTs of references to individual Olive Garden restaurant locations, for Pete’s sake.

You might find these new digital assets exciting or terrifying. Either way, the absurdity is only going to grow. The natural endpoint of blockchains and NFTs—the golden promise of Web3—is that every aspect of human life, as recorded by computers, will be collateralized. Just think how excited or terrified you’ll feel then. [The mere thought of this scares the crap out of me! Or maybe I should NFT my blog posts. Or sell my own blog coin, how about TBBCoin…LOL! The terrifying absurdness of it all!]

 

NFTs, Cryptocurrencies and Web3 Are Multilevel Marketing Schemes for a New Generation

Let’s get back to the absurd reality right now, shall we?

In a recent ad for cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Tom Brady asks seemingly everyone in his contact list, “You in?” As in, are you going to join him in buying some crypto, and not, presumably, in being a football star married to a supermodel. The pitch is straightforward celebrity-endorsement fare, designed to capitalize on the FOMO that is the standard psychological tactic of those who are already invested in cryptocurrencies and related technologies, and who would like the rest of us to come aboard. Mr. Brady has an equity stake in FTX.

A “You in?”-style pitch is also typical of successful multilevel marketing companies. Both make a virtue of the fact that our getting “in” will obviously enrich those urging us to do so, by driving up the value of their own holdings or network. And then, hey, the same could be true for us!

There’s a paradox at the root of the growing crypto ecosystem—a disconnect between the technology and the economics. While individual digital assets—bitcoins, pictures of “bored apes,” giant JPEGs of everything the artist Beeple has ever produced—can be unique, the underlying nature of the internet means that there is, in aggregate, a potentially infinite supply of cryptocurrency, NFTs and all the other exchangeable tokens that make up “crypto” and the broader vision for a decentralized internet known as “Web3.” [True]

Basic economics suggests an unhappy outcome: When the demand for something is limited—there are only so many people on earth, and only so much traditional money to be converted into tokens and cryptocurrencies—and the supply is infinite, the average price of that asset is going to zero. [Also true…eventually.]

Indeed, if one were to distill the entire promise of Web3 to a single sentence, it would be this: By virtue of the ease of creating new tokens and building new businesses around them, Web3 has the potential to securitize any iota of data or code we ever produce. Another way to put that: Web3 represents a way to financialize every possible human interaction. [Exactly what the previous article was concluding…]

But wait…maybe we are indeed starting to see the end game…

Recent research has found that most NFTs don’t sell. A hardly-comprehensive list of dead and abandoned tokens created for crypto projects includes nearly 2,400 entries. For every new cryptocurrency that retains any value, there are many that become worthless. One recent example: the “Let’s Go Brandon” coin, which briefly saw a flare of interest from detractors of President Biden, then had its sponsorship of a Nascar vehicle blocked, and has since crashed in value. [I think my own TBBCoin will sell better than the LetsGoBrandon Coin because I will buy it and my family will buy it…I think hope LOL!]

Risky behavior and new frauds have become commonplace, including a tactic called “rug pulls.” In one version, developers, often concealed behind pseudonymous online identities, offer a new token or currency, then take all the money or crypto people traded in for it, and walk away. The head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has said crypto on the whole is a “Wild West” in need of stronger regulation. [“Rug pull” sounds so nasty! Anyway, regulation is coming. Not sure what it is going to look like. I am hopeful but not willing to bet on anything because, as we know, the lobbying power is very strong in Washington DC and all these companies in the crypto ecosystem are hiring lobbyists and paying them A LOT of money to distribute influence legislation]

 

The Metaverse and NFT Boom Is About to Go Bust

You know what would please me the most? To see people stop buying these stupid ape pictures and their values crash! But wait, maybe it has already started…

The world is already getting bored of the apes

But 12 months in, the new digital future hasn’t quite played out as planned. Since the end of January 2022, interest in both projects [NFTs and Metaverse] has rapidly declined, with all signs pointing to a crash. Worse, it could be the bursting of the digital-only bubble.

With NFTs, monthly buyers dipped below 800,000 for the first time since its peak in January. The average NFT price fell from $6800 in January to $2000. Secondary sales (all subsequent resales of the work after the first purchase) dropped to 7,900 per day, down from a January peak of 38,000 per day, down from an all-time high of 103,765 per day last September. The effects of the drop have been felt across the entire NFT market: data from Coin Market Cap shows the market cap has dropped from a high of $23 billion to around $10 billion, losing over half its value. A quick look on Google Trends compounds the fall, with global keyword search volume for the term ‘NFT’ done 60–70% since January 2022.

But most of all, companies and creators touting NFTs and the Metaverse are yet to find worthwhile use-cases for them, and the public is starting to see through the self-fulfilling hype. NFT creators promise games and clubs and communities that never materialize because…reasons. JP Morgan became the first Metaverse bank, hoping to broker mortgages and loans for virtual property within a virtual world because… reasons. Brands like Pepsi and Taco Bell offer NFT tokens to customers because… reasons. Twitter allowed users to verify their NFT, and it turned their profile picture into a hexagon shape because… reasons. Zuckerberg promised to revolutionize work and play and has so far given us a sub-par Nintendo Wii avatar without the legs, and a remote work experience will have everyone running back to the office.

And so, it poses a question that may have lasting consequences on the future of the internet and the digitally connected world. Is this merely a Bitcoin-esque blip on the path to these new technologies establishing themselves, or is this the bubble bursting already? Of course, these technologies will stick around and might one day establish themselves and become the building blocks of the new ‘decentralized’ internet they champion so hard. But at present, they are a pointless, expensive, resource-sucking result of capitalism gone mad. The words of Amanda Yeo, from a Mashable article published just before Beeple’s sale that started it all, hit the digital nail on the digital head:

“We don’t need NFTs. We don’t benefit from NFTs. The only anemic value gained upon purchasing an NFT is the ability to truthfully say, “I own this NFT” — a sentence with so little significance it’s laughable.’

 

It’s Hard to Tell When the Crypto Bubble Will Burst, or If There Is One

Maybe there is no bubble. Anything is possible, world is moving way too fast. Maybe you should take what you read here today seriously and just don’t do anything stupid. DIVERSIFY!

Graham Friedman, a self-described crypto evangelist, is among them. Mr. Friedman put up more than $20,000 of his own money to buy one wolf and one sheep — or, rather, unique digital images of them called nonfungible tokens. “I’m like, dude, the narrative is so cool,” said Mr. Friedman, a director at Republic Crypto, a digital asset strategy company. “I’m here for the waltz.” [If parting with $20,000 will not cause you any hardship, well, I guess you can blow it like this Graham dude. Because YOLO? smh]

Wolf Game, as it is called, applies some familiar financial principles to a mysterious digital world. Players can buy sheep from the creator of the game, identified only as “the Shepherd,” and lend them back to “the barn” — essentially a storehouse — to earn interest. The payments are in $wool, a digital token that can be used as a form of payment anywhere on the Ethereum blockchain, on which the game is built. To get a sheep back from the barn, players must pay a 20 percent tax in $wool to those who bought digital images of cartoon wolves. [Ok, go back and reread this paragraph. And I will be here to watch you to pull your hair out, WTF!!!]

Article makes a good case, if you are determined to throw some money in this space, to stick with either Bitcoin or Ether instead of another “11,000 coins or tokens that exist out there, all vying to become the next Bitcoin or Ether.”

The article also mentions Mark Cuban losing $200,000 on tokens called “titan” and a Canadian crypto trader with a large futures position in his Binance account. In a recent (another one) steep price downturn he could not access his account online to close out his position only to find out later in the day that Binance had taken possession of his holdings to cover the wrong way bet so he lost $13 million. And he is now suing Binance “but since Binance has no headquarters, a U.S. or European court wouldn’t work.” [As I said, just be careful out there! If you are finding yourself losing sleep or checking crypto prices constantly every day…this is certainly affecting your health! Health is the most important asset…by far!]

 

To end this post, a couple of recommendations:

Follow Stephen Diehl on Twitter.

A site keeping up with all the rampant frauds: Web3 is going just great.

And I leave you with this…

Thank you for reading my blog. If you enjoy it, please pass it on to a family member or friend, thank you!

Some of the links are behind a paywall. You can try to read them using Archive.is. Or use 12ft Ladder. Or the Firefox browser.

TBB
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com