Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Hala Taha [Part 2] : Internet of Value - The Crypto Landscape | Finance | E3

Episode Date: July 10, 2018

Master the crypto market. Part two of the "Internet of Value" provides a broader understanding of the cryptocurrency and blockchain landscape beyond just bitcoin. Did you know there are more than 1600... virtual currencies or alt coins that investors can choose from? And over two dozen of them hold a market cap that's over $1B! After you listen to this episode, you’ll understand how companies and people use crypto, why it’s valuable and key considerations to take when participating in the market. If you haven't checked out the first part of the episode, go back now and take a listen, especially if you're new to cryptocurrency―everything will make a lot more sense! This episode features Phillip Nunn, one of Europe's biggest crypto influencers, as well as severeal industry and research experts.   Young and Profiting podcast is brought to you by audible. Get your FREE audiobook here: www.audibletrial.com/YAP Want to connect with other YAP listeners? Join the YAP Society on Slack: http://bit.ly/yapsociety Follow YAP on IG @youngandprofiting and Twitter @YAP_Podcast Reach out to Hala directly at Hala@YoungandProfiting.com Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to Part 2 of the Internet of Value on Young and Profiting Podcast. If you haven't checked out the first part of the episode, go back now and take a listen, especially if you're new to cryptocurrency. Everything will make a lot more sense. Part 2 of the Internet of Value gives a broader understanding of the cryptocurrency and blockchain landscape, beyond Bitcoin. It explains how companies and people use it, why it's valuable, and the considerations to look for when participating in the market.
Starting point is 00:00:35 Part one of this series introduced cryptocurrency, with Bitcoin receiving most of the airtime, and with good reason. It was the first tradable cryptocurrency and currently makes up around half of the cryptocurrency market. However, Bitcoin is far from the only digital currency out there. There are more than 1,600 other virtual currencies or altcoins that investors can choose from, of which over two doesn't have a market cap that's over $1 billion. Can you give a summary of the cryptocurrency market? So who are the big players? What are the different all coins out there?
Starting point is 00:01:10 Are there any trends or themes? So an all coin is anything other than Bitcoin. Altcoin ecosphere tends to break up into almost a taxonomy. There are platform plays. So for example, Ethereum is a platform play where people raise. money or have smart contracts. And so Ethereum has been, at least within the last year and a half, has been second, almost always. And Vitalik Buterin and his team really has built something very dynamic. And a number of cryptocurrencies also desired to be platforms. So whether it be Eos,
Starting point is 00:01:49 or whether it be Tron, or whether it be Cardano, that's almost a taxonomy of coins that's desire to be a platform. Groups like Ripple aspires to be a type of sediment layer for banks. So we know Ripple. The Ripple actually, it's not exactly cryptocurrency, so it's like a
Starting point is 00:02:11 banking solution. And I think most of people know that because there was a huge Ripple hype and Ripple went to like $3 $3. You know, and right now it's running way less. So Ripple is kind of tricky. It has very small, very niche use case. With Ripple, you can
Starting point is 00:02:27 make it so cheap and so fast to send wire transfers, money transfers, but it's not exactly cryptocurrency in a traditional understanding. Well, what you'll see in the top 20 market cap, I think 17 of the top 20 companies are all blockchain platforms, if that makes sense. Blockchain is at the heart of most cryptocurrencies, but there are several cryptocurrency projects that don't use blockchain, and instead they use some other type of distributed ledger technology. For example, Iota uses Tangle as a ledger, and the new Hedera platform uses hashgraph, both of which claim to be faster, secure, and more fair than blockchain. There's other nuances
Starting point is 00:03:11 in the crypto market. For example, some cryptocurrencies are not totally decentralized, and they're considered semi-centralized, with a person or company having some form of control over the ledger. For example, Ripple, Iota, and Lightcoin all fall into this bucket. If you look at the number three cryptocurrency is Ripple, right? And Ripple is backed by a commercial company. Lightcoin is also associated with a commercial enterprise. So I think the jury is still out. But right now, the number one cryptocurrency is Bitcoin. It's decentralized. There is no business behind it. We have these light coin. So light corn is basically the same as Bitcoin. questions will arise why you actually have to use light coin. What's the difference? The light coin is
Starting point is 00:03:58 very similar. And one of the main use cases from what I see, it applies some protocol improvements before Bitcoin goes into those improvements. We have to say something about Bitcoin cash. The Bitcoin cash is it's a fork. So basically, it's a mirror currency to Bitcoin. And the difference is what's your vision. For Bitcoin, the vision is like stir of value. And for Bitcoin cash, the vision of accuracy, so you can actually pay for some goods. Can you talk about the Bitcoin scalability problem and why Forks needed to arise to help solve for that? Bitcoin is really the first use case that showed that the blockchain can work.
Starting point is 00:04:35 However, when it was first put forward, people did not foresee that it would need to support so many transactions. So it's not as efficient as traditional financial systems that support thousands of transactions per second. And so once Bitcoin did hit a critical mass last year of, I believe, over 15 million users, the transactions started taking more and more time, right? So a block is mined on the Bitcoin network every 10 minutes on average. And it just took too long.
Starting point is 00:05:12 and the mining fees to verify and authenticate transactions began to become too high relative to the transaction. So people were paying, you know, $30, $40 for a $10 transaction. It just made no sense. And so other currencies, first like coin a few years ago and most recently in August of 2017 Bitcoin Cash proposed increasing the block size or decreasing the time it takes to mine a new block. And what they did essentially was to change or add different protocols to the existing Bitcoin core network and create a new blockchain. I know when it comes to cryptocurrency,
Starting point is 00:05:59 Bitcoin kind of takes all the shine. It was the first, it's the biggest. How about Ethereum, the lesser-known counterpart of Bitcoin? Sure. In 2014, Vitalik Beteran, the founder of Ethereum, basically came to the Bitcoin community with a very simple and powerful idea. And he basically said, if the blockchain works for Bitcoin as currency, why can't we take the same idea and apply it to pretty much any other centralized method of managing value or even of managing identity?
Starting point is 00:06:35 So real estate, contracts, even digital identity could, in theory be managed by this decentralized network. And he proposed creating another blockchain called Ethereum running on ether that would enable anybody to create a smart contract that governs a token that isn't just an asset but has
Starting point is 00:07:00 actually utilitarian use. Just like you know a token at an arcade game or a chip in a casino. So you're taking this token and you're using it in a technological ecosystem. Now, presumably, a Vitalik Boutarian could have taken this idea to a venture capital company
Starting point is 00:07:20 and raised money for it. But what he chose to do because he came from the blockchain community is crowd sale, his idea. Allow me to help you get more familiar to an important player, Vitalik Boutarin, and his massive contribution to this
Starting point is 00:07:36 space with Ethereum. When he was just 19 years old, four years after Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin, Butarian dreamed up of a new platform based off blockchain technology. His goal was to bring the same decentralization from Bitcoin to more than just currency, and he was the first to move beyond the financial use case. In 2013, he released a white paper, a standard practice for launching a new blockchain product. And this white paper described an alternative blockchain platform called Ethereum,
Starting point is 00:08:06 designed for any type of decentralized application or DAP. We talk about Ethereum a little bit. Ethereum is one of the computers of the world. It's a smart contracts-based system where people program on there. So all of the ICOs you see are built on Ethereum smart contracts with the RC20 tokens. And that's really sort of the utility token. So if you have an idea, you want to put it on the blockchain. It's almost like a white-label blockchain.
Starting point is 00:08:35 That's what Ethereum is. Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency and trades over 500. today. Its appeal is that it's built in a way that enables developers to create smart contracts. Smart contracts are scripts that automatically execute tasks when certain conditions are met. So, a smart contract is essentially a program, a few lines of code that are built into a token. In this case, let's talk about URC20 or Ethereum-based tokens. And so when you run a crowd sale or you raise money, you create this token that has, a very specific use case.
Starting point is 00:09:13 For example, let's say I raise money for an alternative way to distribute movies. And so filmmakers can now buy this token or acquire this token. And part of the smart contract that's built into this token distribute the funds between the filmmaker and the distributor. And so this automated distribution of funds within a smart contract that's hard-coded into the token enables that utilitarian use so that it's not just a security or an asset that people invest in in the hopes of seeing returns down the line, but people actually use this token in order to facilitate specific actions and features in a technological ecosystem.
Starting point is 00:10:00 The system that supports this functionality isn't free. The network needs ether, a unique piece of code that can be used to pay for the computational resources needed to run DAPs. By building DAPs on the Ethereum network, developers can utilize Ethereum's blockchain instead of having to create their own. Additionally, one of the most notable features of DAPs is how their creators are able to raise capital, real money, by selling tokens through an ICO or initial coin offering. Whereas traditional apps have to seek outside investments or IPO, a DAP startup can simply hold an ICO and sell tokens to raise the capital they need to build their company. Ethereum has a blockchain, and within the Ethereum blockchain, people can write smart
Starting point is 00:10:46 contracts and raise money. And so, for example, file coin raised money on the Ethereum blockchain. Telegram, the encrypted networking and messaging system on phones, just had an ICO. And I want to say they raised probably the largest ICO ever. Ethereum is this blockchain network. which has the opportunities and the code built into it with smart contracts to raise money. So like mentioned, Ethereum is a blockchain platform that moves beyond the cryptocurrency use case. It uses smart contract technology to support solutions for things like identity and reputation systems, file storage, banking, and insurance. And here's one concrete example of an Ethereum DAP on the rock.
Starting point is 00:11:40 called Civic. Civic aims to help protect users' identity and provide blockchain-based secure, low-cost, on-demand access to identity verification. This prevents the need to start from scratch every time someone requests a background verification check for something like opening up a bank account or applying for a job. With an example like this, it's easy to see why Bloomberg News writes Ethereum is the hottest platform in the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchains, and companies like JPMorgan Chase, Intel, and Microsoft use their resources to invest in it. But I'll be honest with you, it wasn't easy for me to find a clear, practical, live, and working example of a DAP or cryptocurrency. Can you talk about how companies and industries and people find value in blockchain and the types of services and use cases there are for that technology?
Starting point is 00:12:31 Yeah, so I think right now a lot of people are likening the blockchain ecosphere, and the development around blockchain to the internet, circa 1993, 1992. And that is that everyone's talking about this vast potential, but if one were to go back in the archives of the internet of 1992 or 1991, there wasn't a lot of commerce going on. So to liken that to blockchain now, there are a lot of opportunities for applications,
Starting point is 00:13:04 but not everyone or all these applications are, being enacted. This is a really interesting point. So what you've got to remember at the moment is that the whole of a cryptocurrency that has a $321 billion market cap today. And that's been as high as three quarters of a trillion dollars in December last year. Everything's really still in beta phase. And by beta phase, we mean that fundamentally the technology doesn't really work in every day life at the moment. So things are with Bitcoin transaction speeds, the advent of smart contracts and sort of lots of corporations are poking and prodding them to see how they can work and fundamentally change their businesses. So what we've created here is an industry where I think by the end of
Starting point is 00:13:46 this year will be over a trillion dollar market cap comfortably. We've created an industry here that kind of is almost in this like R&D phase and nothing actually works at the moment. I know there are sort of people that do transact. So I'd like it to, if you talk about the internet and the advent of the internet, we're kind of in the 19. 80s at the moment, and the equivalent. I mean, obviously the internet really kicked in in the 90s, mid to late 90s. It really blew up. So we're kind of in the 80s.
Starting point is 00:14:15 So we're 10 years behind what we would deem as the sort of start of the internet. However, because of the speed of which technology moves now, I don't think it'll be a 10-year period. So I think over the next three or four years, there's a compression will happen, and the market cap will continue to grow and these brilliant innovations will happen. And these genius minds who've got access to capital now via initial coin offering. will create some of the most magnificent technologies of the future. So it's a really exciting time.
Starting point is 00:14:43 In case of cryptocurrencies, there are only to fund projects and buy and hold. A lot of people trying to say that crypto is a new way to pay for things. You know, this is the new money. But for me, it's not, we're another yet. Maybe a decade from now, yes. But think about that, we have a huge infrastructure. You know, we have the U.S.D. We have dollar and it's so convenient to use.
Starting point is 00:15:10 It's so widespread. Everyone compares to the price of some goods into USDs. Even BDC is traded to USD and when you look at any crypto chart, you can see that it's valued compared to USD. So as a store of value, Bitcoin and crypto, yes, they works. But in other cases, we're another yet. I think what you're really fun in the moment is that it's more of a gimmick. So a restaurant will say we accept Dash and Manero and Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:15:40 And it's more of a gimmick which we can get on a bit of press and profile and publicity. So I don't think in terms of main adoption, I think what we're seeing is Bitcoin is a store of value. So people actually buying large amounts of Bitcoin as a long-term hold as an alternative to stocks and shares and gold. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to. to my employees. My team is growing every day. We're 60 people all over the world. And when it comes
Starting point is 00:16:12 to hiring, I no longer feel overwhelmed by finding that perfect candidate, even though I'm so picky, because when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post noticed. Indeed, sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast by boosting your post to the top relevant candidates. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored ones, according to Indeed data worldwide. I'm so glad I found Indeed when I did because hiring is so much easier now. In fact, in the minute we've been talking, 23 hires were made on Indeed according to IndyD data worldwide. Plus, there's no subscriptions or long-term contracts. You literally just pay for your results. You pay for the people that you hire. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring
Starting point is 00:16:53 right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash profiting. Just go to Indeed.com slash profiting right now and support a show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need. What's up, Yap, gang? If you're a serious entrepreneur like me,
Starting point is 00:17:18 you know your website is one of the first touch points every single cold customer has with your brand. Think about that for a second. When people are searching on Google, everybody who interacts with your brand first is seeing your dot com initially. But here's a problem. Too many companies treat their website
Starting point is 00:17:33 like a formality instead of the gross tool that it should be. At Yap Media, we are guilty of this. I am really due for an upgrade from my website, and I'm planning on doing that with Framer this year. Because small changes can take days with my other platform, and simple updates require tickets. And suddenly, we're just leaving so much opportunity on the table. And that's why so many teams, including mine, are turning to framework. It's built for teams who refuse to let their website slow them down. Your designers and marketers get full ownership with real-time collaboration, everything you need for SEO and analytics, with integrated A-B testing. I love that. I love testing and making sure that we've got the best
Starting point is 00:18:10 performing assets on the page. You make a change, hit publish, and it's live in seconds. Whether you're launching a new site testing landing pages or migrating your full.com, Framer makes going from idea to live site fast and simple. Learn how you can get more out of your dot com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com slash profiting for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's 30% off in 2026. Again, that's Framer.com slash profiting for 30% off Framer.com slash profiting. Rules and restrictions apply. Hello, young improfitters. Running my own business has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done, but I won't lie to you. In those early days of setting it up, I feel like I was jumping on
Starting point is 00:18:56 a cliff with no parachute. I'm not really good at that kind of stuff. I'm really good at marketing, sales, growing a business, offers. But I had so many questions and zero idea where to find the answers when it came to starting an official business. I wish I had known about Northwest Registered Agent back when I was starting Yap Media. And if you're an entrepreneur, you need to know what Northwest Registered Agent is. They've been helping small business owners launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They literally make life easy for entrepreneurs. They don't just help you form your business. They give you the free tools you need after you form it, like operating agreements and thousands of how-to guides that explain the complicated ins and outs of running a business.
Starting point is 00:19:35 And guys, it can get really complicated, but Northwest Registered Agent just makes it all easy and breaks it down for you. So when you want more for your business, more privacy, more guidance, more free resources, Northwest Registered Agent is where you should go. Don't wait and protect your privacy, build your brand, and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit Northwest Registeredagent.com slash Yap. free and start building something amazing.
Starting point is 00:20:02 Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwestregisteredagent.com slash Yap free. Here's the fun fact. I happen to be recording this podcast on May 22nd, which is known as Bitcoin Pizza Day. Today, Bitcoiners all over the world will celebrate the anniversary of the first real-world transaction of Bitcoin and the most expensive pizzas in history. On May 22nd, 2010, a programmer paid a fellow Bitcoin user 10,000.
Starting point is 00:20:30 and BTC for two Papa John's pizzas. Back then, when the technology was just over a year old, that equated to about $25, but that's worth over $5 million by today's exchange rate. At Bitcoin's all-time high last December, the pizzas would have been worth over $11 million, making them the most expensive pizzas of all time. With growth like that, it's clear to see why nobody wants to buy anything with their cryptocurrency and rather they choose to invest in it as a store of value. But why is cryptocurrency growing so fast?
Starting point is 00:21:03 And what makes it so valuable? So as far as cryptocurrency is concerned, how can people trust it to be something of value? Well, the reality is that they do trust it. Again, their two, the fiat currency, like the dollar since 1971, is a unit of value that has value because the government says it has value.
Starting point is 00:21:23 Before 1971, it had value not. just because the government said so, but because it was coupled to the value of gold, which people agreed has had value for thousands of years before that. But the reason it has value is because enough people agree that it has value. So that's all you really need. Enough people need to agree that it has value. And the reason that it really took off over the past couple of years is because it hit critical mass where people are just saying, wow, this is the new thing. the new internet of money, I want to be a part of that as well. It's all about what the society decides, like, if it has value or not.
Starting point is 00:22:07 And usually it depends on how many people use it, how many people have it, how many people want to have it. So when you have a cryptocurrency, when there's very few outstanding and there's a use case for it, I think it can be very highly valued. And so Bitcoin is predicated on the idea of scarcity. There will only be 21 million Bitcoin ever. Right now, there have been over 17 million mined. And so over the course of the next 100 years, there will be fewer and fewer coins mind to the point where at some point, Bitcoin will only be a store of value.
Starting point is 00:22:49 This idea of scarcity makes Bitcoin different from a fiat currency like the USD. Bitcoin was originally created to be a store of value similar to gold. The value of the U.S. dollar has eroded over the years because the Federal Reserve is allowed to print money. In order to prevent Bitcoin from operating like Fiat, Satoshi Nakamoto included a 21 million cap on how many Bitcoins could ever exist. This way, no one can simply boost the number of Bitcoins in the same way that the Fed just prints money. The market value of Bitcoin, that is the money that people are willing to pay for it, follows the same old supply and demand rule. A high demand increases its price and a low demand decreases it.
Starting point is 00:23:34 The demand for Bitcoins is on the rise, yet its supply is limited. So in theory, Bitcoins will become more valuable in the future as scarcity sets in. Metcalf's law. In Metcalf's law, and people use this for a number of things, including the Internet, dot-com bubble of the late 90s. But Medi-Cath law highlights that as you add one user to the network, it increasingly grows in value. So if you have 10 people using a cryptocurrency, then it goes up 10x.
Starting point is 00:24:07 But if you have 20 people or 30 people, and right now, it was estimated there's only about 20 million people in all the world who hold cryptocurrency. But if one were to run a Med-Caf law on that, that network, whether that be Bitcoin or the whole cryptocurrency ecosystem in general, that's a very valuable network. And it's only really a crumb of a crumb in terms of market cap. I mean, today, I think the whole entire cryptocurrency ecosphere is under $500 billion. And that's in terms of other asset classes,
Starting point is 00:24:41 only a drop in a bucket compared to real estate or the bond market or the S&P 500, any of the other asset classes. it's such a small asset class. Can you talk about the importance of a cryptocurrency community and why it's important to look at that community when considering investing in the space? So Bitcoin would not be what it is today if millions of people were not there to buy into it,
Starting point is 00:25:11 to spend it, and to develop it. So whoever Satoshi Nakamoto is, those first few people, who put together the system, whoever they are, they're not enough. This is bigger than one person or one group of people. What made Bitcoin so powerful, what launched the blockchain and the Bitcoin blockchain onto the scene was critical mass of millions of people developing, mining, spending, and talking about this.
Starting point is 00:25:45 What would you say to somebody who said that it's too late to buy Bitcoin? buy Bitcoin. So Bitcoin as a network costs about $350,000 per hour to run. And so that's the electricity, that's the mining. So as a proposition, now in all fairness, the banking system costs, I'm sure, seven times that. I'm sure maybe a billion dollars an hour to run, right? But I think with the new proof of stake algorithms and the other algorithms that are coming out that are much more efficient, it's worth looking into how
Starting point is 00:26:26 valuable Bitcoin will be. With that said, specifically to your question, is it too late to buy Bitcoin? I would say it depends. One is, what is your stomach for risk? I know many people who bought Bitcoin at $12,000. They were very excited when it ran
Starting point is 00:26:41 at $20,000 and cashed out. And so as a short-term play, it may be smart. In terms of a long-term play, I don't know. First, there's many unknowns, right? There's what will regulators do? We know what the tax code did,
Starting point is 00:26:57 that every cryptocurrency transaction is now a taxable event. So those are really factors that tend to discourage cryptocurrency trading. So in terms of it, is it too late? I tend not to be a Bitcoin maximalist
Starting point is 00:27:14 and I'm certainly not altogether in favor of what the decred white paper called the prototype coin, Bitcoin. That was a prototype. And many people, particularly the Bitcoin maximalists, are gathering around the flag, highlighting that Bitcoin will go to a million dollars. I don't know. I'm not convinced by that argument because I see other algorithms that use a lot less electricity and tend to be fairer. Well, there's a couple of points here. So first, I'll be clear that obviously none of the...
Starting point is 00:27:44 constitutes advice, nor is anybody a cryptocurrency advisor because it's a very unregulated space. But I think there will be cryptocurrency funds this year that people will be able to access by regulated means, which will be interesting. So actually, if you look at Bitcoin today, Bitcoin is the sixth largest currency in the world. And when people say Bitcoin is dead and Bitcoin is doomed and Bitcoin's not here to stay, number six in currencies in the world out of nearly 300 countries. So Bitcoin's doing just okay. Now, there is obviously a possibility that Bitcoin could go to zero.
Starting point is 00:28:26 There's a possibility that Bitcoin could go to $250,000 a coin. You know, you can't rule out those possibilities. But actually, there's also the possibility the dollar goes to zero, which most people think it already is. Same with the pound, same with the euro, inflationary currencies. So just like any other currency, the interesting thing about Bitcoin is
Starting point is 00:28:46 Bitcoin doesn't act just as a currency. Bitcoin acts as all three. So it kind of acts as a currency, like a dollar, so you can trade it. I can go to a shop potentially with a Bitcoin card, and I can pay for my goods. It also acts as a store of value, like a long-term store of value,
Starting point is 00:29:05 which is then dictated by the share price. price going up or down. So the price of Bitcoin has a currency going up or down. And also it acts as a commodity. It's a competitor to gold. So basically you have almost like a three-prong currency with Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:29:21 It's a very fascinating thing. And as you say, if you actually think about the supply and demand of Bitcoin, all that's got to happen over the next 12 or 18 months with the current circulation of Bitcoin are a few of the largest sovereign wealth funds or maybe banks and institutions
Starting point is 00:29:38 as a defensive strategy. They want Bitcoin in case they get hacked. So they'll hold a lot on their accounts for hacking and things like that. If they start taking large tranches of Bitcoin out of the market and removing those from sort of the general people needing to invest with Coinbase, that creates a huge supply and demand. So what you would potentially have is millions and millions of people trying to buy about two or three million Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:30:04 And that creates the supply and demand. So the price predictions, if you look at people like Tim, Drayper, he's saying $250,000 a coin by 2022. I wouldn't say that's going to happen. I think we'll have a six-figure sum per Bitcoin by then, but it will purely be driven by supply and demand. I recently just read a paper where there's only 23 million Bitcoin wallets throughout the entire world. Well, there are over 7 billion people on the planet. And so if you think about network effects, let's say it were to double or triple, or let's say a billion people, one-seventh of all people in the world use cryptocurrencies. The network effect,
Starting point is 00:30:45 and as result, the wealth generation of that would be exponential. It's the most exciting game in town because it's the intersection of finance, but more particularly magical math, particularly network effect. In terms of investing in other cryptocurrencies, I mean, I would not veer away from anything that's a top 20 market cap. I think what would doing is we are creating the next internet, which is the internet of value, and the companies that are in the top 10, maybe 50, maybe 20 market cap are all there because they're the best of what they doing that specific industry. So like Iota is internet of things. You've got Monera, which is privacy. You've got Ethereum Neo, which are the utility, smart contract type
Starting point is 00:31:33 scenarios. But actually what you do always have to bear in mind is that this industry moves so quickly and so fast, there could be a new Ethereum in 12 months of time that takes two-thirds of Ethereum's market share because it doesn't have scalability issues, it's quicker, it works better, and it's quite a fickle industry that can move quite quickly, which is kind of where it mirrors the tech bubble, so there are lots of different scenarios that could play out. But actually maybe 60% of the top 20 market cap will be gone in two years, maybe. Hey, young improfitors. As an entrepreneur, I know firsthand that getting a huge expense off your books is the best possible feeling. It gives you peace of mind and it lets you focus on the big picture and invest in other things that move your business forward. Now imagine if you got free business internet for life. You never had to pay for business again. How good would that feel? Well, now you don't even have to imagine because spectrum business is doing exactly that. They get it that if you aren't connected, you can't make transactions, you can't move your business forward. They support all types of businesses, from restaurants to dry cleaners to content creators like me and everybody in between.
Starting point is 00:32:42 They offer things like internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone TV, and mobile services. Now, for my business-owning friends out there, I want you to listen up. If you want reliable internet connection with no contracts and no added fees, Spectrum is now offering free business internet advantage forever when you simply add four or more mobile lines. This isn't just a deal. It's a smart way to cut your monthly overhead and stay connected. Yeah, bam, you should definitely take advantage of this offer. It's free business internet forever.
Starting point is 00:33:10 Visit spectrum.com slash free for life to learn how you can get business internet free forever. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Happy New Year, Yap, gang. I just love the unique energy of the new year. It's all about fresh starts. And fresh starts not only feel possible, but also feel encouraged. And if you've been thinking about starting a business, this is your sign.
Starting point is 00:33:35 There's no better time than right now. Now, 2026 can be the year that you build something that is truly yours, the year where you take control over your career, and it starts with Shopify. I've built plenty of my own businesses on Shopify, including my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. So it's a two-day workshop. People buy their tickets on Shopify. And then my mastermind subscription is also on Shopify. I built my site quickly in just a couple of days, payments for setup super easily.
Starting point is 00:34:02 And none of the technical stuff slowed me down like it usually does, because Shopify is just so intuitive. And this choice of using Shopify helped me scale my masterclass to over $500,000 in revenue in our first year. And I'm launching some new podcast courses and can't wait to launch them on Shopify. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online and in person, just like the millions of entrepreneurs that they power. You can build your dream story using hundreds of beautiful templates and set up as fast with built-in AI tools that help you write product descriptions and edit photos. Plus, marketing is built in so you can create email and social easily. And as you grow, Shopify can scale right along with your business. In 2026,
Starting point is 00:34:42 stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash profiting. Go to Shopify.com slash profiting. That's Shopify.com slash profiting. Yeah, fam, hear your first. This new year with Shopify by your side. Look out for people like Monaro, it's a brilliant privacy coin. Neo, which is the Chinese alternative to Ethereum. I think Ethereum will stay strong. Cryptocurrency's like Dash are very prominent in there. But again, this is very early doors.
Starting point is 00:35:17 So a very high percentage of these businesses will fail because fundamentally they are tech startups. And if you look at a VC model, they expect 8 in 10 to fail. It's a high risk, high reward market. You know, people shouldn't believe that this is a, put your life savings in and it's going to sort of give you a tenfold return on your retirement part because that's not the way to do this because you could
Starting point is 00:35:40 lose all your money. You have to be very careful. I think when we're investing, and this was always the advice I think that's out there, is only invest the amount that you can reasonably lose. So in regards to red flags when it comes to investing cryptocurrency, what should we look out for? I like red flags. And cryptocurrency has so many red flags. It has so many red flags. So for example, almost all of these currencies have their own Slack channels or telegram channels. And you can get a sense of when people are trying to pump it or dump it. And so a lot of these communities will basically work together to increase the value of the coin with the thought of exiting. And so I think that's a real red flag, the idea that, well, who's going to be around holding the bag?
Starting point is 00:36:32 So, for example, this summer, there was a coin called Dental Coin. And it lives on the Ethereum network. And what has to look at the value proposition of, if I have a coin just to spend with dentists, how valuable is that? And I smile because Dental Coing did really well. But I think people are going to be left holding the bag because all of its founders are likely out of Dental Coin now. So I think in terms of the red flags is, one, if it's what they call an ERC 20 token or ERC320 token,
Starting point is 00:37:07 which is a token that just lives on the Ethereum network and is raising capital on the Ethereum network, one has to look at the long-term viability of that. So something that came out about a year ago, maybe 11 months ago, is something called the bat token, the basic attention token. And they're hoping to be a web browser that you get paid to browse, the web through this browser, through what they call the bat token, the basic attention token. And I'm not sure how viable that is. Just like with FileConger, StorJ, the idea that I'm going to sell some of my computing power through my individual computer, I'm not sure how viable that is.
Starting point is 00:37:47 I'm not sure if I want other people's files on my computer. Now, they'll highlight that this is cryptographically encrypted and that I won't have access to it. But I'm not sure if that's a viable business either. If you're going to raise something on the Ethereum network and it's going to compete with a legacy business, if you will, with Google Drive or with Amazon Web Services or Dropbox, how viable is it? And secondly, how long term is that community? For example, with DentalCoying, I would think that all of its founders are likely gone. It made me think that how much utility is there in a currency. Why do you think that millennials should pay attention to cryptocurrency. What are the reasons why we might need to pay attention to this, whether it be
Starting point is 00:38:34 investing or otherwise? Well, I think, as I said before, that the cryptocurrency genie is out of the bottle. It's not going away. Maybe Bitcoin will be replaced, right? Google was not the first search engine, and very few people remember what the major search engine was before Google. So, maybe, you know, a new cryptocurrency will emerge that will be bigger than Bitcoin. Maybe Bitcoin over time will be marginalized. But the blockchain and cryptocurrencies are here to stay. And eventually, probably the traditional financial system will find a way to integrate the blockchain and cryptocurrencies into it.
Starting point is 00:39:20 And the borders will blur and mesh. So if you're interested in investing, if you're interested in the new digital money, I think cryptocurrency is going to stay with us for a long time. I think it's just getting started. And I will not make any kind of investment advice. But I am a firm believer in the potential of the blockchain and in the future of cryptocurrencies as a whole. And so I, don't know which cryptocurrency is going to last for years to come, but I do know that cryptocurrency is not going away. So why should millennials pay attention to cryptocurrency? Look, we have a global debt crisis, trillions and trillions of dollars all over the world, and we have a scenario where
Starting point is 00:40:13 the system is broken, huge deficits in pension funds, every single pension fund that's attached to a Futsi 100 company or a NASDAQ company or listed company. They are underfunded. They are billions and trillions in deficit. We have to provide a future for ourselves. And the way the world works, the way we work at the moment, we go to work,
Starting point is 00:40:36 we get a salary, we pay something to a pension, we save. Millennials aren't interested in that. Millennials need more stimulation in a more immediate way and people won't save for a 20 to 25 year outcome anymore. So people want more certainty, more security around their future.
Starting point is 00:40:53 So what you have is this ridiculously tech-savvy group of people, i.e. millennials and Gen Z, who are intrigued, inquisitive, they want to save, they want to do the right things for the future. And cryptocurrency is absolutely the ticket for these people. So a way of actually saving some money, being in control of your money, away from the distrust of traditional financial institutions
Starting point is 00:41:18 and governments and banks, but then actually making money from my own existence and my own data and what I do. So maybe I'll go and buy myself a plane ticket. And for that, I will earn some tokens because I used Emirates Airlines instead of Singapore Airlines. So this is the future of the world. So people taking back a bit of control and being in charge of their own destiny and being able to make a freer and fairer sort of future for themselves. Thanks for listening to Yap, Young and Profiting Podcast.
Starting point is 00:41:51 where anything goes if it makes you grow. This concludes our Internet of Value series, and you now know more about cryptocurrency and blockchain than 99% of the people out there, so congratulations. But I hope this is just the beginning of your journey and you keep building your knowledge on this topic. If you're interested in best practices on how to research buy and store cryptocurrency,
Starting point is 00:42:13 check out our show notes on young and profiting.com. Follow us on Instagram at Young and Profiting and Twitter at Yap underscore Pod. If you like the show, be sure to review and subscribe. And just remember that Yap is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice. Conduct your own due diligence or consult a licensed financial advisor before making your investment decisions. A special thanks to all my guests for lending their wisdom on the show.
Starting point is 00:42:41 Philip Nunn, Ed Lainer, Ohad Flinker, Paul Subject, and Tim Mellenick. And kudos to the Yap team for supporting this episode. Our assistant producer Timothy Tan, audio engineer. John Sparks and assistant Danielle McFatter, a music by Harry Fraud. See you next time. This is Hala, signing off.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.