Crypto Notes
I don't believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can't take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can't stop.
Friedrich Hayek, Interview with James U. Blanchard III, 1984
(This quote is from the video recording but does not appear in the transcript).
🥇 There is no second best
Bitcoin has no founder
Bitcoin has no ruling foundation
Bitcoin has no pre - mine
Bitcoin has no insiders
Bitcoin has no initial investors
Bitcoin has no office
Bitcoin has no website
Bitcoin has no paid executive team
Bitcoin has no marketing team
Bitcoin has no paid dev team
Bitcoin had no starting price
Bitcoin has no human controlling it
Bitcoin is the fairest money on earth
Bitcoin is anti-fascist technology.
Bitcoin is anti-imperial technology.
Bitcoin is anti-ruling class technology.
Bitcoin is anti-communist technology.
Bitcoin is anti-forever war technology.
Bitcoin is anti-megacorp technology.
Bitcoin is anti-tyrant technology.
⁉️ Beginners' guide
Bitcoin and other altcoins are digital cash, a way of buying and selling things over the Internet. The first step is establishing a digital wallet, either via a browser-based web wallet or by downloading a desktop or smartphone wallet from Blockchain.info, Mycelium, Coinbase, Electrum, or other Bitcoin wallet providers. Your Bitcoin address as well as your public and private keys are generated automatically when you set up your wallet. Your Bitcoin address is typically an identifier of 26 to 34 alphanu‐ meric characters, beginning with the number 1 or 3, that represents a possible desti‐ nation for a Bitcoin payment—for example, 1JDQ5KSqUTBo5M3GUPx8vm9134eJRosLoH, represented like this string of characters or as a QR code. (This example Bitcoin address is the tip jar of an informative podcast covering blockchain technology called Let’s Talk Bitcoin.) Your Bitcoin address is like your email address; people with your email address can send you email; people with your public-key wallet address can send you Bitcoins.
Because Bitcoin is digital cash, your wallet does not contain the actual cash (thus the term wallet is a bit of a misnomer). Your wallet has your address, public and private keys, and a record of the amount of Bitcoin you control on the blockchain ledger, but not any actual cash. Your wallet should be kept as safe as any traditional wallet to pro‐ tect your private keys; anyone with access to them has access to controlling or spend‐ ing or transferring your Bitcoin. You should not give your private keys to any other party, or store them at an exchange (poor private-key security has been one of the contributing factors in Bitcoin-related thefts and scams).
With your address, anyone can send you Bitcoins (just as anyone can send you email with your email address). To send someone else Bitcoins, you need his address and the private-key part of your wallet where the software checks that you have control over the Bitcoins you would like to spend or transfer. To send someone Bitcoins, you scan his wallet address QR code or otherwise obtain his address characters or QR code (e.g., by email or SMS). The sender scans the QR code address of the receiver’s wallet and uses the wallet application to enter additional information about the trans‐ action, such as amount, transaction fee (usually affirming the amount prespecified by the wallet software), and any other parameters to send the receiver Bitcoins. When the sender submits the transaction, a message is broadcast from the owner of the sending address to the network that x number of coins from that address now belong to the new address. This operation is authorized by the sender’s private key; if that wallet does not have the private key corresponding to those coins, the coins cannot be spent. A bona fide transaction is received nearly immediately in the receiver’s wallet application, with an “unconfirmed” status. It then takes about 10 minutes for the transaction to confirm and be inscribed in the blockchain per blockchain miners. So, for large purchases such as a car or real estate, you would want to wait to see the transaction confirmed, but you wouldn’t bother to do so for a coffee purchase.
Bitcoin is a computer-coded currency with an automated money supply that requires no permission from a third-party to use it.
🆕 Crypto price
2024: $63,230
2023: $26,602
2022: $19,723
2021: $40,927
2020: $10,480
2019: $10,197
2018: $6,317
2017: $4,007
2016: $608
2015: $232
2014: $397
2013: $122
2012: $12
2011: $6
2010: $0.06
2009: $0.00099
🆕 Latest Crypto News
🔸Follow these accounts to upgrade your timeline:
Market: @Small_Cap_Gems
Investing: @InvestingAuth
ETFs: @ETFAuthority
TSX: @StockGuruHQ
WEB3: @WOLF_WebThree
Finance: @WOLF_Financial
Trades: @PennyboisStock
News: @WOLF_News_
🔸 Apparently, out of 21 millions bitcoins, 4 were lost and Satoshi Nakamoto (?) kept 1, which means only 16 millions bitcoins are available. 93% of the 21M Bitcoin has been mined. Only 7% is left.
🔸 Bitcoin price milestones:
Feb 2024: $52,000
Feb 2021: $50,000
Feb 2021: $45,000
Jan 2021: $40,000
Jan 2021: $35,000
Jan 2021: $30,000
Dec 2020: $25,000
Dec 2020: $20,000
Dec 2017: $15,000
Nov 2017: $10,000
Oct 2017: $5,000
Nov 2013: $1,000
Apr 2013: $100
Jun 2011: $10
Feb 2011: $1
🔸 Blackrock, Vanguard and Statestreet are the largest shareholders and control 88% of S&P 500 companies. Total money is about 430 trillions, they control 66 trillion of the entire world's wealth.
🔸 Top 5 sectors for growth in 2024 apart from Bitcoin are:
1- Crypto gaming: Nakamoto Games, Immutable X, Render and Magic.
2- AI: Fetch, Verasity, AGIX, Bittensor.
3- DEFI: Coreum, XDC, Quant Network.
4- Injective: Arbitrum, LCX.
5- Solana: Pyth Network (Solana Chainlink), Bonk (Solana-Based Memecoin).
6- AI-related: TAO, DEAI
7- Trump-related: MAGA
Halving
Halving is the next big event for Bitcoin in 2024 and this will further create a massive supply shortage. The last halving happened in May 2020, and the next one will occur in April 2024. As the name says, Bitcoin halving means that the reward for mining will be cut in half - from 6.25 BTC with a new block, to 3.125 BTC. The last halving will happen in the year 2136 when the mining reward will be only 1 Satoshi - 0.00000001 BTC.
New Bitcoin halvings (from start to 1 Satoshi):
Genesis - Block reward 50
2012 Halving - Block reward 25
2016 Halving - Block reward 12.5
2020 Halving - Block reward 6.25
2024 Halving - Block reward 3.125
2028 Halving - Block reward 1.5625
2032 Halving - Block reward 0.78125
2036 Halving - Block reward 0.390625
2040 Halving - Block reward 0.1953125
2044 Halving - Block reward 0.09765625
2048 Halving - Block reward 0.04882812
2052 Halving - Block reward 0.02441406
2056 Halving - Block reward 0.01220703
2060 Halving - Block reward 0.00610351
2064 Halving - Block reward 0.00305175
2068 Halving - Block reward 0.00152587
2072 Halving - Block reward 0.00076293
2076 Halving - Block reward 0.00038146
2080 Halving - Block reward 0.00019073
2084 Halving - Block reward 0.00009536
2088 Halving - Block reward 0.00004768
2092 Halving - Block reward 0.00002384
2096 Halving - Block reward 0.00001192
2100 Halving - Block reward 0.00000596
2104 Halving - Block reward 0.00000298
2108 Halving - Block reward 0.00000149
2112 Halving - Block reward 0.00000074
2116 Halving - Block reward 0.00000037
2120 Halving - Block reward 0.00000018
2124 Halving - Block reward 0.00000009
2128 Halving - Block reward 0.00000004
2132 Halving - Block reward 0.00000002
2136 Halving - Block reward 0.00000001
Crypto owners (% of population)
🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates: 27.67%
🇻🇳 Vietnam: 20.54%
🇸🇬 Singapore: 13.93%
🇮🇷 Iran 13.46%
🇺🇸 United States: 13.22%
🇵🇭 Philippines: 13.02%
🇺🇦 Ukraine: 10.31%
🇻🇪 Venezuela: 10.28%
🇿🇦 South Africa: 10%
🇹🇭 Thailand: 9.32%
🇮🇳 India: 7.23%
🇧🇷 Brazil: 6.98%
🇵🇰 Pakistan: 6.40%
🇫🇷 France: 5.90%
🇷🇺 Russia: 5.87%
₿ List Of Top 11 Bitcoin Holders In The World
| Rank | Holder | Bitcoin Holdings |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Satoshi Nakamoto | 1.1 million |
| 2 | Binance Exchange | 550,133 |
| 3 | Blackrock | 347,767 |
| 4 | Grayscale | 263,801 |
| 5 | Microstrategy | 226,500 |
| 6 | Bitfinex Exchange | 221,315 |
| 7 | US Government | 213,246 |
| 8 | Chinese Government | 190,000 |
| 9 | Fidelity | 176,626 |
| 10 | Block One | 164,000 |
| 11 | Robinhood | 139,144 |
₿ Crypto Notes
🔹 Crypto is adversarial venture capital. Crypto VCs are largely unnecessary.
🔹 Bitcoin ETF hype is more memestock than gold 2.0.
🔹 Hype can make the first sale, but you need trust to make the rest.
🔹 The US Dollar - we print, they pay. The Fed is going to fight inflation - and lose.
🔹 Bitcoin is an exit from the Fed.
DeFi is an exit from Wall Street.
Social media is an exit from mass media.
Homeschooling is an exit from industrial education.
Creator economy is an exit from employment.
Individuals are leaving institutions.
🔹 Every generation has to learn the lesson of inflation firsthand.
🔹 I suspect Bitcoin may become the Linux of value systems. That is, not greatly adopted by consumers, but powering a lot of infrastructure.
🔹 Crypto assets don't take power away from banks and governments to print money. They empower /anyone/ to print their own money and then the market can choose which monetary properties are most desirable.
🔹 Bitcoin cannot be coerced. That’s why it’s the most important experiment in the world.
🔹 Bitcoin and other completely on-chain assets are provably scarce - scarcity is enforced by code and distributed consensus.
🔹 The promise of scarcity is a slender thread, only as strong as the social contract with the creator and interwoven with the backing of the community.
🔹 Crypto is the smartest people in the world exiting into their own economy.
🔹 If you believe that money should be controlled by the state, then nothing in crypto will ever make sense to you.
🔹 Crypto is not a subset of finance; finance is a subset of crypto.
🔹 The inevitable endpoint of crypto is maximum decentralization and maximum privacy.
🔹 The future currency wars are Western crypto vs Chinese CBDC.
🔹 Crypto is so unique that it’s not possible to reason by analogy to history.
🔹 The next big wave in DeFi starts when Wall Street figures out that crypto has built a better casino.
🔹 Silicon Valley tech is the old guard, distributed crypto is the frontier.
🔹 The paradox of crypto: coins are scarce, but currencies are abundant.
🔹 There is far more speculative investment money in crypto than there is in traditional venture capital.
🔹 Crypto is the first amendment - the right to build.
Bitcoin is the second amendment - the right to bear arms.
🔹 Crypto is spawning a generation of programmers that understand the fundamentals of game theory, finance, and governance.
🔹 Work on a crypto-system, and your work may last lifetimes.
Work on a walled garden, and your work will land in the dustbin of history.
🔹 Crypto is to venture as venture is to value.
🔹 Crypto stablecoins - choose between blowup risk, censorship risk, and fraud risk.
🔹 Crypto may be an industry that is more valuable with a small set of users that don’t attract nation-state attention than a with a large set who do.
🔹 Three advantages of decentralized crypto protocols over centralized companies: Permanence (censorship resistance), Payments, Permissionless programmability.
🔹 Crypto may be a way to export western financial products with strong rule-of-law (USD, S&P 500, etc.) to people in countries that don’t normally have access to such instruments.
🔹 The crypto stack is technically more daunting than most software stacks - but because the ecosystem has a strong open source ethos, each problem only needs to be solved once.
🔹 The Internet will be the next (and last) Silicon Valley. It’ll take crypto, VR, better remote tools, and continued political malfeasance to make it happen. May take decades, but great news for the rest of the world.
🔹 Easily the best browser. Chromium + privacy + crypto.
🔹 Crypto (really, Bitcoin) is more of a hedge against the government’s response to the economic disruption than to the economic disruption itself.
🔹 For crypto, early adopters were those who believed in the sovereign individual over the sovereign state.
🔹 The killer app for crypto is Socialism. Any lobby that isn’t explicitly left-of-center gets demonized by the media.
Crypto lobby won’t be an exception. It’s only a matter of time until the narrative-industrial complex comes after crypto.
🔹 A Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is the opposite of a cryptocurrency.
🔹 There will be as many viable crypto assets as there are online communities.
🔹 Three advantages of decentralized crypto protocols over centralized companies.
1. Permanence (censorship resistance)
2. Payments
3. Permissionless programmability
🔹 The data with which the Federal Reserve is making decisions has too much latency. — Elon Musk
🔹 Much of the innovation in the last few decades was in search, social, crypto, and AI, because pure math is the last unregulated frontier. Invite the regulators in and they’ll freeze innovation here just as they did in healthcare and energy.
🔹 Someday, we will look back and realize that there were only two banks all along. The Federal Reserve, the fully centralized bank, and all of its branches, and… Bitcoin, the fully decentralized bank, and all of its stepchildren.
🔹 Just as there are those who won’t accept that mere consensus can create digital gold, and those who won’t accept that mere smart contracts can create a decentralized Wall Street, there are those that won’t accept that digitized social contracts will create valuable tokens.
🔹 The Internet only tolerates complete centralization and complete decentralization. Everything in between gets destroyed.
🔹 We are going from a world where every protocol has a token, to where every (decentralized) application has a token, to where every valuable digital representation of an object or person has a token.
🔹 You can’t guarantee some banks and not guarantee others.
🔹 Asymmetric opportunities:
Invest in startups. → Start a company. → Create a book, podcast, or video. → Create a (software) product. → Go on many first dates. → Go to a cocktail party. → Read a Lindy book. → Move to a big city. → Buy Bitcoin. → Tweet.
₿ Bitcoin is the bet that there is only one kind of valuable token.
🪙 Altcoins are the bet that there are many kinds of valuable tokens.
🖼️ NFTs are the bet that each and every token can be uniquely valuable.
Fiat ➡️
Bitcoin ➡️
Large Cap ➡️
Mid Cap ➡️
Small Cap ➡️
Bitcoin 🔂
🔑 Public/Private-Key Cryptography 101
When the wallet is initialized or set up for the first time, an address, public key, and private key are automatically generated. Bitcoin is based on public-key encryption, meaning that you can give out the public key freely but must keep the private key to yourself.
Bitcoin addresses are created by the software picking a random number and creating a public/private key pair (per the current standard, Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm, or ECDSA) that is mathematically related, and confirmed at the time of spending the Bitcoin. This startup operation generates the private key, but additional steps are required to generate the Bitcoin address. The Bitcoin address is not simply the public key; rather, the public key is further transformed for more effective use. It is cycled through additional encryption protocols (like SHA-256 and RIPEMD-160), a hashing operation (transforming a string of characters into a shorter fixed-length value or key that represents the original string), and administrative operations (removal of similar-looking characters, like lowercase L and uppercase I, and 0 and O; adding a checksum to the end; and adding an identifying number to the beginning of the address—for most Bitcoin addresses, this is a 1, indicating it is a public Bitcoin network address).
It is infeasible though technically possible that two different people could generate the same Bitcoin address. In such a case, both would be able to spend the coins on that particular address. The odds of this happening are so small, however, that it is almost 99.9999999999 percent impossible. A Bitcoin wallet can contain multiple addresses (one security procedure is using or generating a new address for each transaction), and one or more private keys, which are saved in the wallet file. The private keys are mathematically related to all Bitcoin addresses generated for the wallet. In Bitcoin, a private key is usually a 256-bit number (although some wallets might use between 128 and 512 bits), which can be represented in one of several ways. Here is one example of a private key in hexadecimal format (256 bits in hexadecimal is 32 bytes, or 64 characters in the range 0–9 or A–F):
E9 87 3D 79 C6 D8 7D C0 FB 6A 57 78 63 33 89 F4
45 32 13 30 3D A6 1F 20 BD 67 FC 23 3A A3 32 62
Here is another example of a private key and its corresponding public address:
Private key: 79186670301299046436858412936420417076660923359050732094116068951337164773779
Public address: 1EE8rpFCSSaBmG19sLdgQLEWuDaiYVFT9J
Doing some sort of back calculation to derive the private key from the public key is either impossible (per the hashing operation, which is one-way only, or other techni‐ ques) or prohibitively expensive (tremendous computing power operating over a longer time than would be necessary to confirm the transaction). Only the address is needed to receive Bitcoins, whereas the public/private key pair is required to send Bitcoins.