American Consequences - November 2019

I’d sell at least a piece of it, and then try to buy it back later.” 2. Next, the cryptoworld needs better products – social media, storing things, or tokenizing real-world assets. Think about fairly mundane activities – like streamlining transactions, improving databases, or keeping records. Or it could be something irresistible... an app or a service that’s right around the corner. Wade likes to “own technology that companies who don’t want to build their own technology will need” – comparing them with owning the railroads, steel mills, and refineries as the U.S. was industrializing. 3. And finally, the third wave is broad adoption. That’s when real participants realize that a crypto token solves a real problem that they have – like the wallstreet. com domain did for Wade as an e-mail address. That domain, of course, ended up being worth $1 million. So could we ultimately see a single bitcoin valued at $1 million? WE’RE ALL TIME TRAVELERS If you’re an average American looking to save for retirement, you have to protect your savings for upward of 50 years.

But the U.S. dollar has lost 95% of its value since 1913. And it’s lost 60% of its value since 1984. Money creation since 2008 alone, Wade says, makes the parabolic move of the prior several decades look insignificant. On the other hand, bitcoin had no value for the first year and a half of its existence. Since then, its price has gone “up and to the right”... with some ups and downs along the way. (See bottom chart.) And because of the way it’s built, bitcoin is guaranteed to have low inflation – only a small percentage of coins can continue to be mined as time goes on. “Cryptocurrencies are ‘retraining our brains,’” says Wade. “It’s showing that saving beats spending... and it’s detaching money from government control.” Wade mentions that he recently wrote a movie script about time travel... and how the travelers can plan for an unknown future for what money will be worth. “It’s now being read by the producers of Designated Survivor , the producer of Vampire

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What the Rise of Bitcoin Looks Like logarithmic scale

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November 2019

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