Metacoin

Covering Bitcoin, the Blockchain, Altcoins, and Fintech

Ethereum

The Zipper Merge

Kid 2 is taking driver’s education — a rite of passage here in the U.S.A., though less so in these modern times, where your every everything is catered to by things like apps, mass transit, Uber, and that concept of “prolonged adolescence” exacerbated by the response to COVID — and likes to tell his parents about how much he’s learned. This also means we have to relearn some things where “The Science” used to be settled (“10 and 2!” is now “9 and 3!”).

Which brings us to “The Zipper Merge.”

Why Not A Video from the Province of Alberta?

We’ve been merging all wrong, it seems. Wait til the very last minute, use both lanes, and Bob’s Your Uncle.

Ethereum’s Zipper Merge

If you’re like me — laser-focused on ETH for months, then there was an implosion in prices and you cut your losses and moved on to other things, like making a living — then the Ethereum Merge has sneaked up on you like a construction zone on US-55. What do you do with your ETH? Do you have any ETH2? Do you know the difference? Do you care?

Understanding The Merge

Long story short, The Merge is where Ethereum moves from “Proof of Work,” or a mining environment that is similar to Bitcoin’s (but not as profitable) where miners are rewarded with coins for proving validity of transactions, to a “Proof of Stake” system, where owners are credited for staking (“parking”) their assets.

Y’all ain’t getting Web3 without Proof of Stake, so that’s where it’s headed. But not without a meandering road with a few…forks.

Once The Merge happens, rumored to be in a couple weeks but certainly in September, ETH will likely see some changes to its price — maybe mad fluctuations? — and it’s going to be bumpy.

So get yourself some tunes and buckle up for the ride. (No, we don’t know who to believe either.)

Some Thoughts THAT ARE NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE

These thoughts are not investment advice. But here are some considerations…

You Could Leave It All There*…

So yeah, there’s option one. For instance, I have some ETH parked on MegaCryptopolis. The game site is migrating to its own whole new world, so there’s not much choice I have in the matter. Whether I’ll get an airdrop there is another question: rumors abound about airdrops and whether they’ll happen, or not.

And if you *do* leave it all there, you’re looking at — thanks to calculations from Bitmex, with which we cannot trade in our region, natch — $45 per ETH.

Whales will make out like bandits. The rest of us could get a nice dinner out (after taxes, because, well, our jurisdiction will tax the airdrops like income and whatnot).

BTW, the Asterisk above means those assets you have parked in DeFi tools and other…things…like MegaCryptopolis. Or Sushi. Or a Uniswap pool.

…Or You Could Take It All Out of DeFi…

That’s another option here. Probably a pretty viable one, too, if you’ve lost any money from a rug pull. (Who among us?)

The thinking: you can’t trust anyone with your ETH so you might as well take yours out, and certainly take it out of any DeFi protocol with a high potential of rug pulls.

Sensible thoughts, but here’s option 3, which is where we’re landing:

…Something In Between

Here’s the winner.

We yanked some of our coins out of DeFi things, and we traded out of some duds to get ETH a couple weeks ago. BUT, we’ve also done that “why the heck not?” thing with a few. Holding a little in a pool of SUSHI and ETH, a little more in a couple barely there pools.

And holding tight.

We’ll All Be in One-Lane Traffic Soon

That’s the guess: from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake, some folks will head off onto side roads, others will go off-road, and we’ll stick in this lane for a little while, while holding a piece of one of those four-wheel drive things.

Hoping it’s not a Yugo.

Crypto: Down. Stocks: Down. Inflation: Up. So What Do You Buy?

Here’s yet another post with a couple blatant caveats: (1) THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE and (2) NOBODY KNOWS WHAT’S GOING ON.

We’ve had a couple weeks here in CryptoLand. You name it, it’s down. Take our 2022 Growth Portfolio: a hypothetical $10,000 investment with $1,000 each in ten different crypto assets. Thank God it’s only hypothetical.

Screenshot from May 20, 5:30 a.m. CDT

It was a bloodbath. It still is kinda sorta a bloodbath, in that nobody knows if BTC saw the bottom, or if ETH’s move to Proof of Stake (known colloquially as “The Merge”) is going to be all that, or if stablecoins will stabilize.

And whether or not you’re better off throwing darts.

At Least the Stock Market Is Okay, Right?

Let’s answer the question in the meme with a screenshot.

Stock market, one-month performance.

The problem, though, is that to keep propping up the stock market, The Fed is going to need to thread the needle on interest rates. Too much of an increase and the stock market tanks. Too little of an increase and you can’t catch up with inflation.

So you’re painted into a corner because the stock market is so important to everyone’s 401(k) plan and the inflation rate — which is caused, DUH, by ALL THAT PANDEMIC MONEY PRINTING — is so important to everyone’s standard of living that it really REALLY stinks to be Jerome Powell right now.

Now, Let’s Talk Inflation. Cue Karen Carpenter…

“We’ve Only Just Begun…”

As David Stockman — President Reagan’s former Budget Director, native Midwesterner (shout-out to Michiana!), and future guest on my YouTube channel (call me!) — told us on Doug Casey’s Dispatch a couple weeks ago, we are collectively screwed. And it’s mostly thanks to central bankers.

That part about J-POW having a rough job is not an understatement; the corner we have been painted (printed) into is troublesome. Investors don’t know which assets to invest in, and the average Joe is more worried about real-life things like gas prices or the cost of food.

So…What DO You Buy?

We follow a few financial people on Twitter, on YouTube, and elsewhere. We’re nailing Jell-O to a tree here.

Here’s Joe from Heresy Financial, telling us (SPOILER ALERT) that Treasurys might be the way to go. Here’s another YouTuber — one we found from typing in “where to invest 2022” into the YouTube search bar, then going with the first one we found from the month of May — suggesting individual stocks. And here’s CNBC, taking a break from its “How This [NUMBER] Year-Old [JOB DESCRIPTION] Made [LARGE AMOUNT] By [ZAGGING WHEN EVERYONE ELSE ZIGGED AND/OR INHERITING MONEY]” template (shown here) to give us a whole host of ideas of where to invest in an inflationary environment.

Feel free to grab any of these ideas and batten down the hatches, right?

We’d refer you back (AGAIN) to our series called SHTF. Volume 1 is here and Volume 2 is here. But these are *mostly* crypto-related ideas (with a break for some precious metals and cash on hand). And that isn’t even guaranteed, if the last few weeks are any evidence.

TL;DR: See Elmo

Elmo Fire

Buckle Up. Good Luck.

Creators Gotta Create (and Announcing Our New Collection)

We saw a maxim somewhere on the internet and decided to share it: “Be brave enough to suck at something new.” If the web3 explosion has taught us anything, it’s that there are completely new ways of making a buck — and creators (like you, perhaps?) are learning new and interesting tactics along the way.

And some of us — maybe some of you — weren’t very good at it to start. We get better: the more you write, the more often you write, the better you become at writing. The more you make music, the more often you make music, the better a musician you become. We could go on…

We Are Onto Our 4th NFT Collection

A year ago, we started sucking at something new here: our first collection of NFTs. (The first one is here, created on March 14, 2021.) Called the “Obvious Statement Collection,” the goal was to come up with a few pieces — we’ve created 25 of them so far — that told you something that was, well, obvious. (And maybe semi-controversial, like the statement below.)

Collection two, “One Hundred NFTs,” was perhaps a little better but, as art goes, it ain’t great. Three, though, we’re especially proud of: #Sketches2021 is its name (see below about the giveaway!) and here’s a link to all 256 of them: Sketches 2021.

So it’s time for our fourth collection. We’ve entitled it “Collezione” and the plan is 256 pieces (again; that’s a nice number that is definitely attainable.) 26 of them have been created so far. And we’re pretty pleased with how they’ve turned out.

w123 in the Collezione series

We’re Giving Two NFTs Away!

So here’s what’s up with the giveaways*: All you have to do is follow the instructions below by March 31. We’ll pick two at random and one will get a piece from Sketches2021 and one will get a piece from Collezione. Those instructions…

  • Follow @teammetacoin on Twitter or Instagram. (You can do both to increase your chances!)
  • Like at least one of our posts from between March 20 and March 24.

On April 2, 2022, we’ll select one Twitter follower and one Instagram follower at random (* here’s where the asterisk comes in, as this is not a sweepstakes or contest or the like, all decisions final and it’s a gift and there’s no cash value) and we’ll send them a DM and they’ll respond with their ETH address and enjoy their new artwork.

Good luck! Now go create something.

Inflation.

18 months ago, right before the Presidential election, we wrote a two-part series that got a little bit of attention. In it, we discussed a strategy for when things get pretty bad.

Part One (go here for more: SHTF Part One) is probably more endemic to today’s news of an inflation rate that has the risk of spiraling out of control than Part Two.

But, to be honest, we didn’t think, even back then, that we’d see 7.9 percent year-over-year inflation. In the United States.

(Thanks to tradingeconomics.com for the chart; month-by-month figures going back to Jan. 2017.)

The U.S. Dollar Is…Get This…An Inflationary Asset!

To paraphrase George Costanza’s risk management tapes from the show Seinfeld, “in order to understand ‘inflation’ we must first define ‘inflation.'”

When you print way too much money, you get inflation. “Inflation is, always and everywhere, a monetary problem,” according to Milton Friedman. You can throw blame at whichever President or Congress you’d like (they’re all guilty, as we learn in this balanced piece from the website The Balance), or whichever crisis you’d like (though, to be fair, the Federal Government printed a metric crapton during COVID).

Don’t Believe The (Putin) Hype

Listen to Chuck D.

Don’t listen to Joe B.

The seeds were sown ages ago — like, probably three or four Fed Governors and Presidential Budget Directors ago — and the reality is that Vladimir Putin is a mere scapegoat. Gas prices are rising, but they’re not totally his fault; and the rise in food prices to come will be due, in part, to Putin’s war.

But you could get into a host of academic arguments and ask who bears the most responsibility and it won’t solve the problem.

‘Bitcoin Solves This!’

Yes, and no. And maybe.

As Putin’s War Machine and his “Evil Cronies” are learning, if you can’t use the global financial system that exists — if you’re shut out of traditional banking — you have to make do. In Putin’s case, that means calling China. In your case, that means…well, that means a few things.

First up, you’re not Putin, planning on invading another country. But you don’t know if or when you will fall out of favor with the traditional banks. (See “Trudeau, Justin” for an example of just how that could happen to you.) You also don’t know exactly how bad this inflation stuff will get — and you could find yourself using the black market (WHAT???) before you know it.

Seriously.

Venezuelan Black Market Finance

If you live in Venezuela, you have been dealing with this sort of thing for a while. There’s an official exchange rate, then there’s an unofficial black market rate. And there’s always the risk of the government revaluing the currency.

Zimbabwe had to do this, too, creating a 100 Trillion Dollar Bill back in the day.

And on and on…

Upshot: Get In The Game

You don’t know when the time will come where you need some of that stuff in the post — Cash, Precious Metals, some BTC through Coinbase or Crypto.com, and some ETH too (THOSE ARE AFFILIATE LINKS OVER THERE, WE COULD BE COMPENSATED IF YOU SIGN UP THROUGH THEM) — and you don’t know when it might…hit the fan.

But standing on the sidelines, now, is not an option.

NGMI: Why You Should Sell It All And Become A Monk

You don’t really think we’re gonna make it, do you?

Internet sub-cultures are a wonderful thing. Sometime last year, a combination of NFT purveyors and OG crypto traders started to adopt the phrase “gm” as a means of wishing each other “Good Morning.” It’s really a fine line here. Do it right — simply use the two letters, don’t use capitals, don’t repurpose the General Motors logo — and you’re part of the crowd. You’re Shiv and Tom in the screenshot below. Happy. Complete. Enjoying a good time. Celebrating life.

Do it wrong and you’re Kendall Roy, the punch line of the joke everyone but you is in on. (Watch the video. Cringe with us.)

Shoehorning a Succession reference into a blog post notwithstanding, “gm” evolved and “WGMI” was added shortly thereafter — at least by my measurement of the timeline, which could be off a hair, don’t hold me to it, DYOR and all that — to underscore the optimism that the crypto and NFT communities bring to the world. We’re Gonna Make It.

OR “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” as both McFadden and Whitehead reminded us sometime around 1979*.

We’re Gonna Make It! The optimist is on board: crypto is the future! NFTs are adding value to the economy and giving artists new life!

The pessimist reads the asterisk below.

* IIRC, the song was adopted by the 1979 Baltimore Orioles as their answer to the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates’ choice of “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge. The Pirates came back from a 3-1 deficit to defeat the Orioles in the 1979 World Series; I won 50 cents off my Dad.

Which Brings Us to Our Point: NGMI

Shortly after either learning about the WGMI acronym or reading about the untimely demise of Messrs McFadden and Whitehead, new lingo was created: NGMI. Not Gonna Make It.

How Bout That Portfolio?

Egads! That kinda stinks, right? We launched the Growth Portfolio a couple weeks back on this here site and our goal was to give you, Gentle Reader, a basket of those coins that can give you the best opportunity for potential success. Big coins, mid-sized coins, up-and-comers that are taking advantage of the NFT-based web3 economy: it’s all there!

And it’s getting pummeled, as is everything else.

The Biggest Dogs

BTC is below $40,000, ETH has dropped below $3000. The end is nigh!

This Blog Post’s Title Is Tongue-in-Cheek

We really don’t know how to make sense of this market the past couple weeks. Our own holdings are down nearly a third since the beginning of the year. We won’t even begin to call a bottom, or else we’ll look like this guy.

Or we could guess that this guy (below, Fed chair Jerome Powell) will bring new people to crypto writ large through the Fed’s (possible) creation of something called “digital cash:” this is one of those “CBDCs” being bandied about in other countries.

We also *could* start talking about new NFT developments — seems like everyone is getting in on the action, right? — and see that the challenges to OpenSea from Crypto.com and Coinbase probably say we’ve only just begun.

Our Point: Don’t Give Up Just Yet. Or Do Give Up.

In any event, here are a couple concepts to embrace:

  • Do Your Own Research. “DYOR” is one of the acronyms we use often around here. Don’t rely on us to tell you what to do. Sniff out a few other folks, check into CT (“Crypto Twitter”) and find out what people are talking about.
  • Experiment. We’ve gotten in early on a couple coins. We’ve also blown it on a couple, too. (Our stake in this one, for instance, was purchased when the price was about 80 cents each.) And we’ve created a series or two (or three) of NFTs, with limited success. But, again, we’re not afraid of experimentation.
  • Enjoy the Ride. The main reason yours truly is involved in this space is because he finds it bloody fascinating. Not every project is going to be eye-catching to you, not every token launch is going to make sense, and not every bit of lingo is going to be clever. If it’s not fun, then maybe it’s not for you?

gm

Keep at it. Or become a monk.

We’ll be here either way.