If Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were to disappear tomorrow, what legacy would they leave behind?
I can think of three main impacts:
First, Bitcoin raised awareness of the flaws in fiat money, the superiority of sound money, and the potential of people to trade with each other without third-party intermediaries.
Second, Bitcoin has provided a life raft to ...more
If Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were to disappear tomorrow, what legacy would they leave behind?
I can think of three main impacts:
First, Bitcoin raised awareness of the flaws in fiat money, the superiority of sound money, and the potential of people to trade with each other without third-party intermediaries.
Second, Bitcoin has provided a life raft to ...more
If Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were to disappear tomorrow, what legacy would they leave behind?
I can think of three main impacts:
First, Bitcoin raised awareness of the flaws in fiat money, the superiority of sound money, and the potential of people to trade with each other without third-party intermediaries.
Second, Bitcoin has provided a life raft to ...more
Billions of dollars in Bitcoin are stolen every year. If you're a victim of Bitcoin theft or a scam, read this article first.
I will tell you why all "stolen Bitcoin recovery" services are scams, and what you should actually do.
Can a Bitcoin recovery service help get my stolen Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc back?
The first and most important thing ...more
Bitcoin can seem like the merger of the Wild West and the Jetsons. If you aren't already an expert, keeping away might seem safer. Fortunately, Vellum Capital prepared a whitepaper that makes sense of the cryptocurrency space without being technical or sensational.
Get the complete whitepaper: "Speculation Becomes Consensus Bitcoins Rise And The Coming Crypto ...more
Will Bitcoin go over $20,000 and reach all-time new highs by December 2020? Here's a quick guide for investors to know what's happening now:
The first question: does Bitcoin over 19,000USD represent a new thesis or outlook for the market? No. As for nearly all digital assets, Bitcoin's value is established from a 'stack' of value ...more
In November of 2020, we posted an article that looked at whether Bitcoin was poised to push past the $20,000 barrier. Entitled, “Will Bitcoin Go Over $20K to Reach a New ATH,” that article is worth exploring again several months later as we look to gain some perspective on where things now stand not just ...more
I needed to perform this operation because I had a Trezor Model T with a lost recovery seed and a bad display. When I plugged it in, I saw the LCD backlight lit up, but nothing showed on the screen. I decided to fix this Trezor wallet with a component swap of the touchscreen.
Note: If ...more
Every day, I get 10+ Bitcoin wallets that someone "forgot" the password to. Some are worth a few Bitcoin while some have 100,000 (or more!) Bitcoin. Sometimes they have no idea what the password is, while sometimes, there is a vague suggestion of what the password could be.
They all have three things in common:
There ...more
Now that I’m 40, I feel both qualified to drop some wisdom on the world. To start, here are my 10 Principles of Personal Finance.
1: Marry someone who shares your financial philosophy:
If you don’t, you may be setting up for a life of endless conflict, not to mention the possibility of divorce, as money is ...more
When Robinhood disabled customers from buying GameStop, some people in the WallStreetBets subreddit suggested a need for a "decentralized brokerage." Others said that "GameStop is the new Bitcoin." Yet others decided to target the Dogecoin cryptocurrency, which spiked over 500% before it failed to process transactions due to overload.
The premise behind these ideas is hilariously ...more
This article by "Crypto Anonymous" claims that Tether will bring a crypto "doomsday." The author makes many good points in building his case, yet the overall conclusion is less than the sum of its parts.
Here's the short version of why he's wrong: Yes, Tether creates systemic risk for Bitcoin. But the key claim that new ...more
What happens when the government sends out a stimulus payment? Politicians can print money, but they cannot wish all the goods and services that money buys into existence. They would like you to think that their money causes factories to hire workers and put idle production lines to work. But that's not what happens.
Tens ...more
This article by "Crypto Anonymous" claims that Tether will bring a crypto "doomsday." The author makes many good points in building his case, yet the overall conclusion is less than the sum of its parts.
Here's the short version of why he's wrong: Yes, Tether creates systemic risk for Bitcoin. But the key claim that new ...more
Rejected transactions are disappointing, but it's better than the alternative: having your transactions in limbo for weeks, or thinking that your transaction was accepted when it was not. A "the transaction was rejected because it is too large (in bytes)." error usually happens when are probably trying to spend coins from a mining wallet or a ...more
Multibit was one of the better Bitcoin wallets between 2011-2016. However, in 2019, both Multibit Classic and Multibit HD have been abandoned by its owner Keepkey and are no longer supported. If you still have Bitcoin in your Multibit wallet and need to get it out, read on.
You can still try to send Bitcoin out of ...more
I've seen people lose their Bitcoin in every way imaginable, and I want to help you avoid the most common mistakes. Are you thinking long-term? Will your storage medium last 10 years? Will your family be able to access it in the event of your death? Have you considered that the same events that will ...more
My social feed is full of deeply flawed arguments about the science of COVID-19. It's in the mainstream media too, but it bothers me more when I see it coming from my libertarian friends and organizations.
I used to be likewise "triggered" by libertarian and conservative writing about global warming. Leftists would probably call me a ...more
This tweet raises a few questions:
Is working for the rest of one’s life a worthy goal?
Is work depressing? Should we strive for a life of work or something else?
Do “dream jobs” exist, and should we try to pursue them?
Is the idea of a “dream job” a form of “capitalistic conditioning”?
First, let’s ...more
What is the real market value of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin?
The numbers used to explain the performance of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are less meaningful than most assume.
Cryptocurrencies are not exactly like stocks, and cryptocurrency exchanges do not work like traditional securities markets. As a result, many crypto-asset investment strategies based on conventional definitions of market ...more
This week the United States economy reported an additional 4+ million people filing for unemployment. The cost of COVID19 lockdowns and their destabilizing effect in business is an economic wave unlike anything in our lifetimes. This extraordinary investment environment has also provided tremendous qualitative indication and information about the market’s current assessment of Bitcoin and ...more
Here is how I built a high-performance WordPress website in AWS Lightsail for aier.org. While low-traffic blogs can be hosted on a shared hosting service or a cheap VPC, if your site hosts millions of visitors each month, you will need a more ambitious service-oriented architecture.
The key to high-performance WordPress is a service-oriented architecture that splits ...more
According to a recent survey by Zogby Interactive, the Internet is by far the most popular source of information and the preferred choice for news ahead of television, newspapers, and radio. The majority of Americans now prefer the Internet as their primary and most reliable source of news. Specifically, online publications are preferred over social ...more
I've seen people lose their Bitcoin in every way imaginable, and I want to help you avoid the most common mistakes. Are you thinking long-term? Will your storage medium last 10 years? Will your family be able to access it in the event of your death? Have you considered that the same events that will ...more
There are valid reasons to criticize Bitcoin, but price volatility is not one of them.
Why does the price of Bitcoin change so much from day to day? The answer is simple: the value of Bitcoin derives almost entirely from speculation on future adoption of Bitcoin rather than practical use. Bitcoin speculators are betting on the likelihood that ...more
There are valid reasons to criticize Bitcoin, but price volatility is not one of them.
Why does the price of Bitcoin change so much from day to day? The answer is simple: the value of Bitcoin derives almost entirely from speculation on future adoption of Bitcoin rather than practical use. Bitcoin speculators are betting on the likelihood that ...more
Forbes Magazine featured Vellum Managing Partner Eric Kovalak in "Here's What Investors Need To Know About Cryptocurrency":
Crypto Valuation = Philosophy + Technology?
Eric Kovalak, a managing partner for Vellum Capital, a hedge fund management firm specializing in crypto assets, says, “People are trying to translate the value of cryptocurrencies into a traditional model where they’d use ...more
Ohio on Monday became the first state to accept bitcoin as a tax payment option for businesses, and United Press International went to Vellum partner David Veksler for the definitive take on the story:
"Part of the reason cryptocurrency is so volatile is that nobody knows what will happen to it in the future," said David ...more
Environmentalists have recently become concerned about the impact Bitcoin mining has on global warming. Headlines such as "Bitcoin Will Burn the Planet Down. The Question: How Fast?" and "Bitcoin Mining Alone Could Raise Global Temperatures Above Critical Limit By 2033" suggest that Bitcoin is an unfolding environmental disaster.
However, those panicking about crypto make three fundamental ...more
Here are the five most common cryptocurrency scams my customers ask my help with:
1: Fake mining contracts: "mining contracts" which offer fantastic payouts, such as doubling your money in 10 hours (see screenshot below). After sending the "mining company" Bitcoin, they either disappear or ask for more money to unlock funds. Some "mining services" send a public ...more
