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Bitcoin / Cryptocurrency Discussion (And Predictions)

Timmy C

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Kevin88660

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What do you think of the argument of Ethereum being highly centralized, that Vitalik Buterin and his friends got near the money printer early and are all billionaires now. And that they call the shots, like moving to PoS even against much of the entire net's will. And that this move will stablish their power since they have so much Eth that they will stake and run the nodes that validate transactions. Also Vitalik is working with JP Morgan executives (aren't we triying to get rid of this people?).
And just an observation, Buterin and his team are based on Switzerland, same as the IMF, WHO, and many of the globalist "let's do a great reset folk".

I mean, I love the concept of the decentralized world computer, I just think its fair to ask hard questions. Is this a great project but with something of a rotten inside ?
I think ethereum is fairly decentralised in term of eth ownership. Most of the “centralization risk” from Vitalik and ethereum foundation who calls the shots on all future development. Example if you are a miner who relies of pow for a living you could be on the wrong side of the history soon as this isn’t the future that Vitalik and his gang wants. And they have the influence because users chose to follow nd consensus determines value.

It is a smaller version of the Elon Musk problem, that he gets to decide which coin has a future, therefore it will attract more users and more development.

The bigger issue I see is the lack of skin of in game. Compared to the competitor Binance Vitalik doesn’t own really a lot of eth to motivate him to do years of public work with his own money and time 24 hours around the clock. Binance as every incentive to get its staffs to work on bnb ecosystem.
 

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AceVentures

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If you're not crypto native, if you find a lot of this complicated or seemingly difficult to keep up with, take a look at the latest blog post Mark Cuban wrote on DeFi and Yield Farming. I liked this post especially because it helps traditional investors and entrepreneurs get a better grasp of DeFi/crypto by considering revenues and customers and analyzing the protocol just as an entrepreneur on this forum would when analyzing any other business.

Blog post copied and pasted below:
-----------------------------------------------

I’m going to make this as simple and straight forward an explanation as I can. Yield Farming via Staking and Liquidity Providing are a core feature of most, if not all Decentralized Finance (DeFi) projects. The principle behind why they are brilliant also applies to other crypto projects , but lets put that aside. But first let me say that this is not investment advice. This is how I see the market and there may be things that I am wrong about or could change by the time you read this. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments below.

What Business Are They In ?

The first question you have to always ask about any De-Fi is the same question you need to ask about any business you may create a financial relationship with – “What Business Are They In”

Yes, every single DeFI project, is at its core, just another business. They may or may not know what business they are in, but they are just another business that happens to be using a blockchain and smart contracts to host and program their business processes.

Let me give you an example of some DeFi and Blockchain projects I’ve placed some money with and how I view their business:

Polygon/Matic – They are a very simple business that is hard to execute on. Their job is provide tools that enable transactions using their Ethereum/Solidity smart contracts, built primarily by outside parties, to take place as quickly and in-expensively as possible while still being able to bring in more money than they spend. In order to do this, they charge a fee per transaction. That fee is paid for using their Matic token. Much like you buy your Dave & Buster tokens in order to play their games, you must buy Matic Tokens in order to use the features of their network and smart contracts.

But blockchain based businesses diverge quickly from traditional software and the difference is where the brilliance of crypto based businesses like Polygon/Matic and their competitors, from BTC to Eth and even to Doge coin come in.

Every business or financial software service or application business has cloud computing and operating costs that very often grow faster than their revenues. This is not a surprise, it is exactly why software companies raise significant amounts of capital in order for their “software to eat the world “

Companies like Polygon’s capital needs are very different. Why? Because rather than building their business exclusively on a cloud computing platform like AWS, their businesses are decentralized (im not going to argue the definition of decentralization or security, or speed here) . The foundation of decentralization is built upon an independent party, usually called miners in Proof Of Work Networks like BTC or validators in Proof of Stake Networks like Polygon Matic and a few other crpyto descriptive words, putting up their own capital to provide computing resources in order to support the network platform.

Brilliant.

Any other business you have to raise a shit load of money in order to host your own servers, or more likely pay for cloud computing costs which can be insanely expensive for compute intensive applications and just as expensive for scaling heavy use applications. Plus you have to hire all the people , have the CapEx to support them, etc.

In the decentralized crypto world these 3rd parties (minors, validators, etc) provide the computing power that effectively run the platform in exchange for rewards in the token of that network.

In the case of Polygon, they have validators. These 3rd parties are willing to make this investment if they believe the network platform can grow the numbers of transactions on the network significantly. If they can, that pushes demand for the Polygon tokens they earn. That allows them to earn revenue from the sale of the tokens they earn or they can hold the token and hope it appreciates if demand exceeds supply.

Even better, platforms like Polygon will allow pretty much anyone to STAKE their Matic tokens with those Validators and share in the earnings of the Validators ! Here is a nice guide from Coinbase on what Staking is. Validators love Stakers for a variety of reasons, but they are willing to share their earnings because the more they have staked the more rewards they can collect. It’s a symbiotic relationship that also helps secure the network.

So why is this brilliant ? If Polygon, or any of their competitors , took a traditional, centralized business path where they controlled and owned everything, they would have had to raise not just millions but potentially much, much more. Instead, they create a near zero cost token that they distribute in accordance with the tokenomics they defined to their community (and whose approval is required to make any changes). And it works for all involved.

The crazy part of it all, is that because these businesses are token driven and the costs are distributed and operations are decentralized, it is FAR LESS EXPENSIVE to operate than a traditional centralized business. So where a crypto based business competes with a traditional business, the crypto business may have a significate cost of capital and cost of operations advantage. There are a lot of financial institutions that should be concerned.

So how will Polygon build their transaction volumes and fees ? By having enough widely and heavily used applications. Every platform whether its an exchange or blockchain , is in a race to achieve a network affect. The more users they have the more fees, the more fees, the more they can invest to get users. the more users the more fees it has to share , the more valuable its token, etc.

The Business of DeFi

One way Polygon tries to create a network effect is via DeFi (Here is a good explanation of Defi) based businesses.

As the name implies, DeFi is built on financial services.

Consider Dave & Busters tokens. When you buy their tokens you can only use them in their arcades. You can’t use them at others. One of the foundational businesses of DeFi is the ability to exchange the tokens of one project to those of another. That is why they call them Exchanges. And if the exchange is Decentralized, they call it a …. DEX

Examples of such exchanges that I use are Zapper.fi, (not a true exchange but great for tracking and swapping and Im an investor, so had to get it in here ! ) quickswap.exhange, bancor.network , uniswap. They all are basically the same business, they are token exchanges. They make money from fees every time someone exchanges one token for another. But that isn’t the BRILLIANT part.

In a money exchange business, or even a banking business, you have to have the financial depth to be able to offer the range of needed currencies and services . You need to be able to afford to hedge the risk of pricing volatility between currencies. If you want to do this business with scale, across the world , it can be very expensive and risky.


Not for DeFi Exchanges. What makes running a DeFi exchange so much better than a traditional centralized financial business of this and ANY kind is that rather than the owners of the business, investors and their creditors putting up capital for all the transactions to take place, Liquidity Providers (LPs) do it for them. (this is an explanation) .

I’m a small LP for QuickSwap. I provide 2 different tokens (DAI/TITAN) that enable QuikSwap to offer swaps between these two tokens. As you can see here, this pair is one of many, and you can also see that based on the .25 pct of volume in this swap that Quickswap pays, my return on my initial $75k investment (based on fees only) as of this writing, is an annualized return of about 206% (Based on the fees earned in the last 24 hours. This return percentage will vary all over the map depending on the activity.) But the cool thing is while I don’t get any extra rewards for this pair (you reading this Titan and Quickswap ???), I am currently the only LP in this pool, so I get 100pct of the fees. In every pool, the LPs, get a percentage of the fees based on the percentage of the liquidity they provide.

So in exchange for providing the Liquidity both TITAN and Quickswap need for their businesses, I get .25 of the transaction volume for swaps between these two tokens. As long as I keep making a good return, I will keep my money invested (Volatility can create mark to market losses). If not, I can immediately withdraw it (some platforms have a hold period or penalties) . Have enough LPs and the exchange is far more capital efficient than a similar traditional exchange business and i get to make some money !

In addition, exchanges will often offer LPs additional reward tokens. I provide liquidity on Bancor Network as well and get rewards in their BNT token. They allow LPs to do single or double sided liquidity providing and offer great rewards in their BNT tokens as an incentive to use their platform (FYI, they basically invented DeFi), and to protect against token pricing volatility. Their rewards may not be as high as other platforms, but they are an easier platform to use and do a great job of protecting LPs who keep their Liquidity in place.

One thing to note is that the competition between exchanges is BRUTAL. The rewards have to be high because it is truly a Laissez Faire market. Exchanges compete heavily for LPs. You have to be careful if you choose to be an LP. Unless you are very experienced as an LP make sure to Do Your Own Research. Make sure the platform has a legit business.

Let’s look at another DeFi business, AAVE. AAVE, like its competitor Compound, looks like a bank. But it is not. No where close. Aave is a completely automated , permissionless platform where there are no bankers, no buildings, no toasters, no vaults, no cash, no holding your money, no forms to fill out, no credit ratings involved. Everything is controlled by smart contracts. It’s fully automated. You don’t have to get approval from anyone and it takes minutes to take out a loan. This is called being Permissionless This approach is the future of personal banking.

What business is Aave in ? They are in the business of making it easy for people to loan and borrow. Every time someone deposits tokens, the depositor gets paid an amount of Aave tokens that reflect their share of interest earned by the total pool of depositors , and sometimes tokens like Matic as an incentive to use Aave on Matic as opposed to Ethereum or other networks.

Every time a borrower borrows, they pay the algorithmically set rate. And what is really different, sometimes the borrower gets paid a reward as well. Because Aave and comparable platforms want you to use the platform early and often, particularly when its still a startup and trying to attract depositors, they will reward you for being a user.

And of course, with every transaction Aave gets paid a very tiny fee and they make money on the spread on loan interest that is not distributed to depositors . I should add that the underlying network, whether its Ethereum, Polygon/Matic or any other, earn a fee on every transaction as well. (Which is why they often contribute to the user rewards.).

Now its time to put this in context. As an automated depositor to borrower, matchmaking service, there are no buildings, no huge departments, no branches, no paperwork, no approvals, no confirmation calls to make. All that matters to Aave and their competitors is volume. They can make a FORTUNE for their depositors and token holders because their overhead vs their revenue is miniscule. Automated Financial Market Makers are so much more capital and operationally efficient than similar traditional companies. Banks should be scared.

So lets review.



Basically, traditional, centralized businesses raise capital first. Start a business and then hope they make enough revenue to return enough capital to their investors and/or founders to make them happy.

In the crypto/DeFi world, organizations don’t require near as much capital to start and operate. Rather than raising money in a traditional sense, they can sell tokens to raise capital , they can reward Liquidity Providers instead of having to raise liquidity for financial transactions, they can reward stakers who support Validators, they can operate on a blockchain where most of the CapEx/Infrastructure and much of the critical security is provided by Miners or Validators. They can build communities that replace layers and layers of bureaucracy. And what I’m about to say is what makes the crypto world so dramatically different and why it’s a model for future technology businesses and possibly all businesses.



Profits are of no use. There is no company I have mentioned that thinks they have to make profits to put in their owners pockets. There is no reason to financial engineer and manipulate EPS. This isn’t to say that they don’t have to cover the costs they have. They do. But their mission is not to maximize profits because in almost every crypto based organization, they are decentralized. Every token is created equal. No matter who owns it. And every token owner gets to participate in the community. Yes bigger owners get more votes, but there are not multiple classes of tokens. There aren’t VCs or Founders who’s tokens get priority treatment as with stocks. (at least that i know of), decentralized and automated completely changes the game.



That is not to say that every crypto blockchain or DeFi project will work. They won’t. These facts are not a secret in the crypto world. There is an incredible amount of competition. So much in fact , many, if not most will not work. They will not get enough users or generate enough fees to succeed. (This is a great site to track the fees being generated by different projects (https://cryptofees.info/), Crypto is brutally competitive. But in crypto vs traditional, centralized businesses, all other things being equal, I’m taking crypto every time.

So how do you value a blockchain or DeFi project ? It’s the revenues stupid. Not all that much different than valuing a software business, I look for current revenues, growth rates, defensibility, the strength of the community, If i think the platform can continue to grow as fast or faster than the crypto industry as a whole, It has my attention. If they are vapor ware, talking about what they are going to do , but years in and have still done nothing, and have no revenues, i get concerned. When I buy a token as an investment as I have with Ethereum, BTC and others mentioned above I know there is going to be pricing volatility, but like the early days of the internet, sales cured all. Have happy customers who are willing to pay for the goods and services an application offers and a community that will grow and be supportive and you have me as a long time holder who will stake and possibly LP those tokens

One More Topic

One place that these organizations are VERY DIFFERENT is that they are not based in the USA and they are not corporations. They are foundations. They are Decentralized in their governance. NO ONE owns majority control (although the founders certainly have significant influence). This is not only because of the ethos of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOS), but also because of the ABSOLUTE STUPIDITY of our regulators forcing some of the most impactful and innovative entrepreneurs of this generation to foreign countries to run their businesses.

During the pandemic I gave zoom speech after zoom speech talking about when we look back at the pandemic in 10-20 years we would see world changing companies had been created in 2020 and 2021. Among those companies, its already a certainty that De-Fi and other crypto organizations will be at or near the top of the list. Unlike the early days of the internet where we fostered and supported innovation and entrepreneurs, we are already seeing our politicians shitting on the innovations crypto is fostering. Hopefully this changes quickly or we will lose the next great growth engine that this country needs.



As always tell me what you think in the comments below. I’m still learning so all comments are welcome
 

MitchC

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Musk being musk.
 

Timmy C

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Musk is going insane. Used to love the guy, but he is starting to fray at the edges
He's a welfare dependant.

He can only survive due to his carbon credit scams and government funding.

Under a bitcoin standard, he isn't a billionaire.

Without free helicopter money, he is irrelevant.

Tesla has been around for what 18 years? If you can't scale and figure it out in that time you never will.

But he will keep the green energy save the planet crap going to survive by getting cheques off his daddy.
 

GPM

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Probably nothing I think.

View attachment 38444
I never thought of that, but that really would be great if every country started to recognize it as an official currency. Of course they won't though, that would be far too dangerous. Government survives on theft and they won't allow anything to jeopardize that.
 
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Timmy C

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I never thought of that, but that really would be great if every country started to recognize it as an official currency. Of course they won't though, that would be far too dangerous. Government survives on theft and they won't allow anything to jeopardize that.

Those with the most to gain will. I expect many more to follow.
Those with the most to lose won't, they will fight it off and try to starve it as long as possible.
 

Serito

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I can't seem to understand this.


How do these liquidity pools work? Did the devs cash out or did the price fell to 0 for other reasons?

Everyone's making fun of Cuban because he rejected ADA and has fallen victim to this.
 
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AceVentures

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I can't seem to understand this.


How do these liquidity pools work? Did the devs cash out or did the price fell to 0 for other reasons?

Everyone's making fun of Cuban because he rejected ADA and has fallen victim to this.

Here's a rundown over what happened to IRON: Rekt - Iron Finance - REKT

Funny story is I almost considered farming TITAN/USDC, but I had learned an expensive lesson on another algorithmic coin and decided to stay out of this one.

Remember, there is no free lunch. If a farm promises 50,000% APY - you've got to really tell yourself your other LP pair has to be so much more valuable than their token for the protocol to be rewarding you with so many incentives for access to liquidity.

Not only stablecoins now but all kinds of newer coins are introducing supply/demand mechanisms to adjust the flow. What stands the test of time imo is network [...]

It's a game of musical chairs - and there's so many of these games going on right now that I can't keep my head straight. I just know that for a lot of them when the time comes there will be swift pulls from the liquidity pools. I think it's fair and fun to play these games, but make sure to keep up with the narrative and don't get overzealous or you might be left holding the bag when the pool is drained.
 

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What do you think of the argument of Ethereum being highly centralized, that Vitalik Buterin and his friends got near the money printer early and are all billionaires now. And that they call the shots, like moving to PoS even against much of the entire net's will. And that this move will stablish their power since they have so much Eth that they will stake and run the nodes that validate transactions. Also Vitalik is working with JP Morgan executives (aren't we triying to get rid of this people?).
And just an observation, Buterin and his team are based on Switzerland, same as the IMF, WHO, and many of the globalist "let's do a great reset folk".

I mean, I love the concept of the decentralized world computer, I just think its fair to ask hard questions. Is this a great project but with something of a rotten inside ?


ETH development is obviously more centralized than Bitcoin (it has to be to develop with any sense of urgency) but it's incorrect to say Vitalik and his friends are calling the shots. ETH development is pretty decentralised, especially compared to pretty much every other layer 1 blockchain out there except Bitcoin. Decisions are made pretty much through community consensus. That includes users, clients, node runners, regular devs and core devs.

Moving to PoS has been the plan from the very beginning and EVERYONE is pro-PoS except PoW miners for obvious reasons.

Vitalik has about 0.3% of all ETH and the ETH foundation/early devs have about 2%. There is zero concern about them running the majority of nodes.

Decentralization is deeply embedded in the Ethereum philosophy, much more so than L1 competitors like Solana, BSC and Cardano. I'd recommend watching a few interviews with Buterin, he's a pretty interesting and intelligent guy and obviously cares deeply about what they're building.

Here's a good summary of common ETH criticisms + responses:
Code:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/najp2c/addressing_common_criticisms_about_ethereum/
 
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Kevin88660

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He's a welfare dependant.

He can only survive due to his carbon credit scams and government funding.

Under a bitcoin standard, he isn't a billionaire.

Without free helicopter money, he is irrelevant.

Tesla has been around for what 18 years? If you can't scale and figure it out in that time you never will.

But he will keep the green energy save the planet crap going to survive by getting cheques off his daddy.
ETH development is obviously more centralized than Bitcoin (it has to be to develop with any sense of urgency) but it's incorrect to say Vitalik and his friends are calling the shots. ETH development is pretty decentralised, especially compared to pretty much every other layer 1 blockchain out there except Bitcoin. Decisions are made pretty much through community consensus. That includes users, clients, node runners, regular devs and core devs.

Moving to PoS has been the plan from the very beginning and EVERYONE is pro-PoS except PoW miners for obvious reasons.

Vitalik has about 0.3% of all ETH and the ETH foundation/early devs have about 2%. There is zero concern about them running the majority of nodes.

Decentralization is deeply embedded in the Ethereum philosophy, much more so than L1 competitors like Solana, BSC and Cardano. I'd recommend watching a few interviews with Buterin, he's a pretty interesting and intelligent guy and obviously cares deeply about what they're building.

Here's a good summary of common ETH criticisms + responses:
Code:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/najp2c/addressing_common_criticisms_about_ethereum/
The key thing is if ethereum network can accrual the value back to ether. If not it will be the dapp governance token taking away all the value.
 

Jeff Noel

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The first thing that caught my attention in this thread were the first posts, back in 2017. The Bitcoin was hovering between $5.5K and $9K. if half of those in the thread would've HODLed, they would all be launching another business with their bitcoin money.

Whatever coin you are in, if it has substance, just hold it until Crypto really goes mainstream (El Salvador was a great step towards that). Binance, CDC and other exchanges aren't going away in the next years, they'll only grow... ETH 2.0 coming soon (still gonna be late, but it's soon anyways) will have a huge effect on ETH prices.

BTC will spring back up, its recent update is just a reminder that "hey, we can still work on making it better" after the big energy debate.

My $0.02: We're literally in the growth phase again. Cryptos won't be "done" until the volatility goes down and things start to settle down. At this point, Big coins/tokens will have matured and be fully developed (who knows when?). As always, volatility means risk, so use your brain. Unless you're "daytrading" tokens, I'd rather HODL the hell out of 'em, whether it's BTC, ETH, ADA, BNB, CRO, etc. Any token/coin that's developing uses and infrastructures is promising.

Now, since it's a prediction thread, here are my thoughts on what will happen before 2023:

  1. BTC to 100K easily in the next cycle, just based on the Crypto hype, could go way higher with more updates and features. Why ? Most of the people that will want in on the crypto market will buy BTC instead of buying something else that could be better.
  2. ETH to 10-15K before 2023. Would make it #1 Crypto in market cap, which would reflect the vast uses of the ETH network.
  3. BNB to 1K (conservative)
  4. ADA could follow ETH growth to an extent, it already went from $0.004 to almost $2.00, could spring again since a lot of people have faith in this coin.
  5. CRO could stabilize between $0.30 - $0.50. Unless VISA does a crazy move with them, I doubt this will go past the dollar mark anytime soon, BNB is too big (even if I own more CRO than BNB) and CDC is just pumping money in marketing that doesn't really lend great results for them, while Binance "just is" Binance.
Also, it could be a mistake, but I'm not even looking at NFTs until there's an actual use for them (like the VeeFriends NFTs which actualy give you something useful).

What do you guys think ?
 

Timmy C

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The first thing that caught my attention in this thread were the first posts, back in 2017. The Bitcoin was hovering between $5.5K and $9K. if half of those in the thread would've HODLed, they would all be launching another business with their bitcoin money.

Whatever coin you are in, if it has substance, just hold it until Crypto really goes mainstream (El Salvador was a great step towards that). Binance, CDC and other exchanges aren't going away in the next years, they'll only grow... ETH 2.0 coming soon (still gonna be late, but it's soon anyways) will have a huge effect on ETH prices.

BTC will spring back up, its recent update is just a reminder that "hey, we can still work on making it better" after the big energy debate.

My $0.02: We're literally in the growth phase again. Cryptos won't be "done" until the volatility goes down and things start to settle down. At this point, Big coins/tokens will have matured and be fully developed (who knows when?). As always, volatility means risk, so use your brain. Unless you're "daytrading" tokens, I'd rather HODL the hell out of 'em, whether it's BTC, ETH, ADA, BNB, CRO, etc. Any token/coin that's developing uses and infrastructures is promising.

Now, since it's a prediction thread, here are my thoughts on what will happen before 2023:

  1. BTC to 100K easily in the next cycle, just based on the Crypto hype, could go way higher with more updates and features. Why ? Most of the people that will want in on the crypto market will buy BTC instead of buying something else that could be better.
  2. ETH to 10-15K before 2023. Would make it #1 Crypto in market cap, which would reflect the vast uses of the ETH network.
  3. BNB to 1K (conservative)
  4. ADA could follow ETH growth to an extent, it already went from $0.004 to almost $2.00, could spring again since a lot of people have faith in this coin.
  5. CRO could stabilize between $0.30 - $0.50. Unless VISA does a crazy move with them, I doubt this will go past the dollar mark anytime soon, BNB is too big (even if I own more CRO than BNB) and CDC is just pumping money in marketing that doesn't really lend great results for them, while Binance "just is" Binance.
Also, it could be a mistake, but I'm not even looking at NFTs until there's an actual use for them (like the VeeFriends NFTs which actualy give you something useful).

What do you guys think ?

I am not even looking into NFT as an investment until it's started to be used for real estate etc.

It has a future, but nothing there yet.
 
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Frinys

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The first thing that caught my attention in this thread were the first posts, back in 2017. The Bitcoin was hovering between $5.5K and $9K. if half of those in the thread would've HODLed, they would all be launching another business with their bitcoin money.
This is true. But we also have to remember that hindsight is 20/20. Those that sold in 2017 could very well have been the ones that were right. And the same is true for those that sell now. We simply don't know the future.

Whatever coin you are in, if it has substance, just hold it until Crypto really goes mainstream (El Salvador was a great step towards that). Binance, CDC and other exchanges aren't going away in the next years, they'll only grow... ETH 2.0 coming soon (still gonna be late, but it's soon anyways) will have a huge effect on ETH prices.
Why do you think ETH 2.0 is going to have a huge effect on ETH prices? I'd say that it can go both ways. It seems to me like much of the 2.0 hype is already priced in. I won't complain if it keeps rising, ETH is one of my biggest holdings, but I don't think it will (compared to BTC).

BTC will spring back up, its recent update is just a reminder that "hey, we can still work on making it better" after the big energy debate.
Will it? Why won't it fall instead? I think it is very hard to predict BTC right now. Most likely, interest rates will go up soon. Most people think that higher interest rates = lower inflation = bad for Bitcoin. Which of course holds true if enough smart people think so. This cycle may very well be over.

I think you're right long term. The energy narrative will dabble away sooner or later, more and more will realize that Bitcoin is more than magic internet money. The more energy "wasted" on Bitcoin, the more secure it gets. People will realize this sooner or later.
My $0.02: We're literally in the growth phase again. Cryptos won't be "done" until the volatility goes down and things start to settle down. At this point, Big coins/tokens will have matured and be fully developed (who knows when?). As always, volatility means risk, so use your brain. Unless you're "daytrading" tokens, I'd rather HODL the hell out of 'em, whether it's BTC, ETH, ADA, BNB, CRO, etc. Any token/coin that's developing uses and infrastructures is promising.
I agree. The majority of those pro-crypto should hodl most of their portfolio. As I see it, it has the highest risk/reward ratio. But I'd say that BTC and ETH should be at least 50% of one's portfolio. I see ADA, BNB and CRO as much riskier to hodl than the king and queen.

Btw, I don't know what CRO is doing on that list. If we look at the market cap, your list looks like this [1, 2, 4, 5, 43]. Out of curiosity, why did you pick CRO above any other crypto?
Now, since it's a prediction thread, here are my thoughts on what will happen before 2023:

  1. BTC to 100K easily in the next cycle, just based on the Crypto hype, could go way higher with more updates and features. Why ? Most of the people that will want in on the crypto market will buy BTC instead of buying something else that could be better.
I don't get these two to add up. If this cycle is over, the next one is starting after the next halving in 2024. Bitcoin can't reach 100K in the next cycle before 2023.

If Bitcoin has reached its top this cycle, and it follows its previous trend, it will not reach its ATH before 2024. If it has not reached its top yet this cycle, I too believe we may see 100K before 2023. I'd even say before summer 2022.

  1. ETH to 10-15K before 2023. Would make it #1 Crypto in market cap, which would reflect the vast uses of the ETH network.
ETH may very well hit #1, but not for long. Bitcoin is literally a national currency, ETH is not. ETH is great, but it still has a long way to go before it can compare itself to BTC.

  1. BNB to 1K (conservative)
ETH 2.0 may kill BNB completely. Any smart contract deployed on Binance Chain can be deployed on Ethereum, so if ETH 2.0 is successful, I see no reason why people would prefer the centralized Binance chain over the decentralized Ethereum chains.

  1. ADA could follow ETH growth to an extent, it already went from $0.004 to almost $2.00, could spring again since a lot of people have faith in this coin.
I'm sorry, I don't have much to add here. I don't understand the ADA community, and I probably never will. Personally, looking at the tech, I think it's priced way too high. But I think the key takeaway here is faith in this coin. ADA seems like a religion to me.
  1. CRO could stabilize between $0.30 - $0.50. Unless VISA does a crazy move with them, I doubt this will go past the dollar mark anytime soon, BNB is too big (even if I own more CRO than BNB) and CDC is just pumping money in marketing that doesn't really lend great results for them, while Binance "just is" Binance.
Blank. I want one of those shiny metal crypto cards, I think they look awesome. But I haven't really read up on CRO or its competition at all.

Also, it could be a mistake, but I'm not even looking at NFTs until there's an actual use for them (like the VeeFriends NFTs which actualy give you something useful).
I agree. Still, I think investing in NFTs can be worth it if it is (1) collectibles issued by a well-known entity, for example, an artist, musician, band, etc, or (2) it can be utilized in a game, like gods unchained or NFT Magic the Gathering cards. But it's more or less like buying a lottery ticket.

What do you guys think ?
I think it's a good prediction, but I'd love to hear some more of the reasoning behind it. How did you reason to get such exact numbers? What could happen that makes you change your predictions?
 

AceVentures

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I am not even looking into NFT as an investment until it's started to be used for real estate etc.

It has a future, but nothing there yet.

Alright I'll share what I know - I'm very bullish on an NFT project that I think is a game-changer. I've been following this project very closely for the past few months and it is currently my biggest bet on crypto.

Why NFTs? The simple answer: The abstraction is very powerful and mostly misunderstood by both investors as well as casual users today, presenting a unique opportunity for early adoption of an emergent and disruptive technology.

How are NFTs currently represented in the marketplace and what is their future? Well - most current NFT projects exist as a layer or "wrapping" of digital/physical assets into mostly ERC721 or ERC20 tokens. Although many projects promise unique use-cases on their platforms, fundamentally they're all playing within a sandbox that's kind of gimmicky. How so? ERC721 tokens today only allow you simple functionality - primarily to link a JSON file to a smart-contract. The contents of the "NFT" whether it's an image or a video or whatever, are contained within this JSON file.

Ok so who gives a shit? Well - as it happens - these JSON files are pretty useless from a blockchain perspective, because smart-contracts can't natively do anything with these file types. Hence, most "NFT" projects today are merely a proof of concept - they fundamentally cannot be of much use within an autonomous smart-contract based protocol because they lack composibility to talk to other smart-contracts.

This project I'm invested in is a step-forward towards what can be abstracted into composable smart-contracts, allowing for an exponentiating gain in functionality via execution functions built within NFT contracts.

What does this really unlock?

For starters - it can abstract "key management" into smart-contracts. Think Identity Management


Why should you remember your private/public keypair and seedphrase and have to deal with that low-level of abstraction when it's confusing and scary? You can have smart-contracts that can serve to manage your "identity" or your sets of keys with both software/hardware based accessibility functions built-in. e.g. lost your wallet? Your personal email account and 2FA authorization can be built into a smart-contract to provide recovery functionality.

This is likely to become the first blockchain for mass adoption


Why do I suggest such a thing? Well - what prevents current adoption is mostly technical bottlenecks due to complicated user interfacing. Moreover, a lot of blockchain interactions today are for investing/speculating purposes. Mass consumer level use-cases and UI has not been worked out yet.

Imagine web2.0 elements such as forms on a website, being filled into smart-contracts and published on the blockchain WITHOUT you having to do anything. How is this possible? Introducing relay services.

Relay services are incentivized to process your transactions in your place - so you don't have to deal with anything on the blockchain personally. No signing transactions, no dealing with keypairs/seedphrases. Nope - simply create accounts how we're used to on web2.0 and transact with the website via the same web2.0 flow we're used to. On the backend - your forms/interactions are recorded and sent to the blockchain, all managed for you by relay services.

With this type of process, user adoption and onboarding becomes as simple as it currently is via any web/mobile service.

Why the relay services?

If you can think about blockchain as a "security service" - you can understand the value proposition that something like this project proposes to entrepreneurs. Brands/companies are incentivized to build out customer relationships via this blockchain, because they can have a stronger and more direct relationship with them. Existing brands can provide a sort of "loyalty" card that's for a lifetime and linked to all of their digital behaviour. Attending concerts, buying fan artwork, apparel and merchandise, all can have digital ownership layer that is linked to customers so as to provide more customized relationships.

Brands would be incentivized to run their own "relay service" and front the potential users' transaction fees such that they can onboard this set of users to buy into their brand and become a customer.

So what is this project?

It's called LUKSO - a new L1 blockchain that's EVM compatible and aims to establish cryptographically secured self-sovereign identities.

LUKSO's architecture works very similarly to ETH - it uses the Casper FFG consensus mechanism (What ETH2.0 PoS/ beacon chain is currently running in the background) as well as the latest stable fork of Geth (ETH execution engine).

As you can tell - it's almost an exact copy of ETH2.0 from a consensus and VM functionality - but it has key differences with the most important one being the introduction of the ERC725 standard. This is the new standard for NFTs that is being introduced by LUKSO and it's founder Fabian Vogelsteller.

What's the story behind LUKSO? Well - Fabian was one of the founders of ETH alongside Charles, Gavin, and Vitalik. Fabian was responsible for the web3.js library as well as a co-founder of the ERC20 standard, which is the asset standard what most projects are built upon today. Since 2018, Fabian and his wife have been creating LUKSO as the next blockchain that can allow the functionalities we need in the emerging creator economy.

Project Highlights

  1. Strong background and team
    1. Note that all projects started by other ETH founders have boomed (DOT and ADA multi billion MCAPs)
    2. Fabian co-authored ERC20, responsible for web3.js, and wrote first eth browser mist
    3. Project has been in development since 2018 with a clear trail of execution
  2. Strong fundamentals and product market fit
    1. EVM compatibility ensures quick adoption by developers
    2. ETH based engine automatically benefits from future ETH development
    3. NFT / self-sovereignty / identities are the next emerging narrative
    4. Blockchain activity can grow by organic demand (social-media like user-activity)
    5. Powerful abstraction for easy/efficient onboarding process ---> potential for mass adoption
  3. Strong partnerships with brands
    1. Nike/Channel/Burberry/Instagram on board with NDA's signed
    2. Some of the hottest NFT brands in the space (The Dematerialized & The Fabricant)
    3. Fanzone - a sports card-trading app built using LUKSO. Fanzone has partnerships with the official National German soccer teams and is a startup company funded by Porsche.
  4. Currently misunderstood and undervalued:
    1. Fully diluted MCAP <600MM
    2. Mostly understood at a surface level by the branding of the blockchain as it relates to digital fashion, but the infinite usecases that come from the ERC725 token and the sheer magnitude of an impact that level of abstraction can have is imo not yet fully appreciated
    3. Narrative has not caught up with the tech but will soon
  5. Upcoming activity:
    1. Testnest launch next
    2. Mainnet launch shortly thereafter (~Q4 timeframe)
    3. Listing on Tier1 exchange
    4. Partnership/NDA reveals

Please note - none of the above is advice on what you should do financially. This is a project I'm personally invested in and believe to be a game-changer in the blockchain space. There is significant risk associated with investing in crypto startups and most projects fail. With that said...

I will not be trading or selling any of my LYXe tokens - I plan on holding thru the next 3-5 years. I will look to contribute as a validator on the blockchain once it is launched and use my tokens to build brands/businesses using this software ecosystem.

For the nerds: a simple layout of the architecture.

1624045971689.png
 

Sethamus

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Please note - none of the above is advice on what you should do financially. This is a project I'm personally invested in and believe to be a game-changer in the blockchain space. There is significant risk associated with investing in crypto startups and most projects fail. With that said..
So Ape in? Got it
 
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GerTex

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Here's a rundown over what happened to IRON: Rekt - Iron Finance - REKT

Funny story is I almost considered farming TITAN/USDC, but I had learned an expensive lesson on another algorithmic coin and decided to stay out of this one.

Remember, there is no free lunch. If a farm promises 50,000% APY - you've got to really tell yourself your other LP pair has to be so much more valuable than their token for the protocol to be rewarding you with so many incentives for access to liquidity.
This is one that I actually can speak to since I was in the TITAN/IRON project and followed it pretty closely. The protocol as designed is actually genius. I loved what they built and it was the perfect flywheel with one tiny flaw that only got exposed when the Bank Run Stampede happened. They passed several audits and nobody could have forseen this.

The price of TITAN that Iron Finance used for the redemption mechanism is based on a 10 minute Time Weighted Average Price oracle. So it takes the average price over the past 10 minutes from a variety of sources and uses that as the value of TITAN used for redeeming IRON. That works on Ethereum where this was originally built on because transactions are so slow. It worked great on Polygon as well - until - the bank run started. At that moment price dropped so rapidly that people used bots to arbitrage the system.

All of it started with one big whale that kept dumping a large position - causing a price drop and getting people to sell. He would then swoop in $5 - $10 lower and buy his large position back. Mr. Whale did that several times successfully but kept running into resistance Monday/Tuesday. Until Wednesday morning. He caused a bit of a stir with some of the new people Cuban brought in. Which made the price drop from $61 to 30. It then bounced back to the low $50s. With that extreme of a drop, however, several whales got uncomfortable and pulled their large position and with the market nervous already it was a run to the exits. IF TCR would have pulled price every minute IRON would have regained peg from what I saw around $30 and then again around $20. Things would have been 'okay'. However, the system ended up getting gamed due to the flawed TCR and it was Game Over.

They will come back with VS. 2 I'm sure. The new lending and synthetics piece was a couple of days away from being rolled out. High hopes for the project.
 

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