Shownotes
The Luna token is part of Terra ecosystem. A system designed from the ground up as an easy to use digital currency. The backing of the Luna token with various algorithmic stablecoins is proving to be a very potent combination. We explore how algorithmic stablecoins work in general. The benefits and drawbacks of the Terra ecosystem are covered as well.
News of the day and the market overview as always!
Links
https://www.terra.money/Terra_White_paper.pdf
Podcasting 2.0 Apps Available at http://newpodcastapps.com/
I can be reached by email at mcintosh@genwealthcrypto.com and on twitter at @McIntoshFinTech. My mastodon handle is @mcintosh@podcastindex.social. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Website
Music Credits
Protofunk by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4247-protofunk
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Ethernight Club by Kevin MacLeod
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7612-ethernight-club
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://incompetech.com
Transcripts
Hey
Speaker:everyone.
Speaker:Hey, everyone. No one on this podcast is a financial advisor. All information presented
Speaker:on this podcast is for informational purposes only. Now that we've got the legal stuff out
Speaker:of the way, let's jump on in. Welcome to the Generational Wealth with Cryptocurrency podcast.
Speaker:I'm your host, McIntosh. Today, we're going to be talking about the TerraLuna ecosystem.
Speaker:Wow. It's been a week. It has certainly been a week, everybody. We will be talking about
Speaker:the news later. There is certainly a lot of news to get to. But before we do that, I do
Speaker:want to talk about a coin, a token, an ecosystem that I've had on my radar for a while that
Speaker:I don't believe we've ever really talked about on this podcast other than possibly in passing,
Speaker:maybe mentioning it. And yet, to be honest, it has kind of snuck up on me in terms of
Speaker:its popularity. As I was preparing for this show, I realized that TerraLuna and the TerraLuna
Speaker:ecosystem, they have a lot of market. So we'll talk about that as we get through. So first
Speaker:of all, what is this all about? What's Terra? I thought Terra meant Earth, right? Didn't
Speaker:you guys ever read an old science fiction novel? And it was Terra. At least that's what
Speaker:I remember. Maybe it was only in the science fiction novel I was reading. I don't know.
Speaker:Maybe it was Terra and TerraLuna and the ecosystem around. Luna is actually the token. It's the
Speaker:native token that's part of the ecosystem. But the idea around this is what's called
Speaker:an algorithmic stable coin. And what does that mean? Well, a stable coin is a coin that
Speaker:is pegged to a currency, typically. I suppose you could peg it to something else, but typically
Speaker:like the US dollar. We have, for example, the circle stable coin, which is called USDC,
Speaker:backed by fiat, backed by US dollars. You have Tether is another stable coin, USDT. Tether
Speaker:has a long history. In fact, as we go through this, one of the things that Tether, Tether
Speaker:actually got in trouble at some point and had to pay a fine. I've got the details as
Speaker:we go through this, but they're an example of a non-algorithmic stable coin. So they're
Speaker:backed by fiat or they should be. Terra, on the other hand, is not algorithmic, meaning
Speaker:programmatic. It is a little more complicated than that, but the idea is there's no fiat
Speaker:to back it. So we'll get into that. Just hang your hat on that for a minute. I want to give
Speaker:an overview first. Stable coins in general, though, are the reality is stable coins are
Speaker:a necessary part of cryptocurrency ecosystem. We may not like them. We may not care for
Speaker:them. They may have troubles and we'll discuss some of those as we go along, but they are
Speaker:a necessary component. When I trade out of a currency, they provide a way that I can,
Speaker:let's say I'm doing something as simple as trying to time the market. So I sell hypothetically
Speaker:because I'm a perfect trader, which I am not. But hypothetically, I sold at $69,000 for
Speaker:my Bitcoin and I bought back in at $33,000. $33,000 was the low, at least at this point.
Speaker:So what does that mean? I sold to some type of stable coin. I guess I could have sold
Speaker:to Ethereum or I could have sold to another cryptocurrency, but the reality is certainly
Speaker:in today's market, a lot of the coins move with Bitcoin. So Bitcoin falls, Ethereum falls.
Speaker:They work in tandem. So I don't want to switch from Bitcoin to Ethereum because as the market
Speaker:goes down, my Ethereum is going to lose value. I basically want to convert it to dollars.
Speaker:Stable dollars obviously are not digital. Well, stable coins are the digital equivalent
Speaker:of a dollar. I hope that makes sense and they can certainly be in other currencies. I actually,
Speaker:when I was doing my investigation, my digging, so to speak on Terra, I discovered that actually
Speaker:Terra has coins in other currencies. We'll talk about that in just a minute. I thought
Speaker:that was interesting because I'm not aware of other projects that do this. No, that may
Speaker:not be the case. Somebody will probably send me a message and correct me, but as far as
Speaker:I know, this is the only one that operates outside of the US dollar. Now there is a US
Speaker:dollar, Luna, but there are others and we'll get to that in a minute. Now, just to give
Speaker:you an idea of this stablecoin market, the total cap I looked it up for the stablecoin
Speaker:market grew from about $20 billion in October of 2020. So how many years ago is that? That's
Speaker:not even two years ago, basically a year and a half ago, to more than $180 billion right now.
Speaker:I looked that up earlier tonight. So it's obviously fast growing and it will continue
Speaker:to grow as the overall crypto market grows. It has to, right? Let's say in a hypothetical
Speaker:world five years from now, 10 years from now, let's say Bitcoin is $1 million. Well, if
Speaker:I've got $1 million of Bitcoin, that means that roughly, gracious, I want to say, yeah,
Speaker:I think at its height Bitcoin had a market cap of around $2 trillion. So let's just say
Speaker:that round that up to 100,000. So multiply that times 10, that would be $20 trillion market
Speaker:cap. So let's say that at a million dollars, there was a $20 trillion market cap. That's
Speaker:a lot of money for Bitcoin. That means that the crypto exchanges and all that, they're
Speaker:going to have to have more stablecoin available for trading, right? To be able to trade in
Speaker:and out of this stuff. I hope that all makes sense. That's pretty simple, but they're that
Speaker:gap. They're the bridge between kind of the real world, the non-digital world and crypto.
Speaker:So I can convert a USDT, a tether into a fiat, at least a US dollar in my bank account. At
Speaker:least I should be able to. All right. So given all that, why would we do it algorithmically?
Speaker:Because it scales better. We don't want to have to keep up with the US dollar or gold
Speaker:or whatever in a bank account in order to have my stablecoin. Again, scaling out when
Speaker:Bitcoin is at our hypothetical million dollars and it's $20 trillion market cap, and there's
Speaker:all this tether sloshing around or USDC. They have to have something to back that up, and
Speaker:it becomes a real headache. That's one I would like to have. Regardless, it's still a headache.
Speaker:With an algorithmic stablecoin, you don't have that problem. And these can be done in
Speaker:different ways. It's been tried. Terra is the first algorithmic stablecoin to take off.
Speaker:It's doing very well. In fact, I noticed today it was up like 15% or something. It was actually
Speaker:better than the rest of the market, and we'll talk about that in just a minute. It's hitting
Speaker:these consistent very high levels. Its overall total value locked is increasing. So things
Speaker:are doing really well. Now, let's back up, though. Let's talk about the project in general.
Speaker:It was founded by Daniel Shin, and I do not know how to say this person's name. They are
Speaker:Korean. I apologize if I butchered that. They founded Terra Labs. That's the company that
Speaker:is behind the Terra ecosystem. Now, I'll just go ahead and point out that is a centralization
Speaker:factor, and we're going to discuss that. That was in 2018. The project kicked off. They
Speaker:secured about $32 million in funding with some investors, including, and I've got a
Speaker:list here, and it's kind of an interesting list, just so that you know, Binance Labs.
Speaker:That's Binance, essentially one of their arms. OKEX. Now, that's an exchange I'm a little
Speaker:familiar with. OB Capital, I think they also have an exchange. There's an investment arm
Speaker:of a Seoul, South Korea-based crypto exchange, Upbit, which I've never actually heard of,
Speaker:but that doesn't mean it's not a very large exchange there in South Korea. So, they got
Speaker:a pile of money to do this. They created a white paper that was released in April of
Speaker:2019, and I will put that in the show notes. The same month, they launched the mainnet.
Speaker:The document simply describes Terra as a price-stable, growth-driven stablecoin. It achieves price
Speaker:stability via an elastic money supply enabled by stable mining incentives. So, what does
Speaker:that mean? The project, Terra, has issued stablecoins pegged to the US dollar, LUNA,
Speaker:the euro that's used in the EU, the Chinese yuan, the Japanese yen, the British pound,
Speaker:the South Korean won their currency, and a few others. Those are certainly the major
Speaker:ones. They're all collateralized by the LUNA token. The main stablecoin, which is the US
Speaker:dollar one, is UST, Terra UST. So, just like I said, you got the Terra UST. That should
Speaker:be roughly a dollar, and it is very close to that at any one time. It's not secured
Speaker:by funds, US dollars, whatever. It's secured by smart contract algorithms and the LUNA
Speaker:coin. The LUNA coin is the backing part of this, and I'll explain that as we go along.
Speaker:Here's the note I had made about Tether, actually. Tether, this is opposed to a traditional,
Speaker:if you want to call it that, stablecoin like Tether. Tether, it was discovered, was mostly
Speaker:backed by commercial paper, CDs, and US Treasury bills. They were actually fined $41 million
Speaker:for having misleading claims about their reserves. I will say this, and that was a while ago.
Speaker:It was several years ago at this point. Tether still kind of has a bad, they leave a bad
Speaker:taste in people's mouth. People still wonder, and they've done things to kind of open up
Speaker:and prove what they have, but there's always, because this happened, there's always this
Speaker:kind of doubt in the back of people's mind. All right. So, Tether does this through the
Speaker:protocol's basic governance mechanisms, and that's implemented through that smart contract.
Speaker:It is managed by a Treasury. That Treasury acts like a central bank, and I emphasize
Speaker:the word central. Again, we got centralization. Arguably, it might be unavoidable to have centralization
Speaker:in this. I'm not sure that's true. There are people who argue that, but I will just
Speaker:throw that out there. So there is a Treasury, and proposals can be submitted that compete
Speaker:for programs. They're voted upon, and some of the highest approval ones are approved.
Speaker:So they have basically kind of a DAO, a digital autonomous organization. Now, one of the things
Speaker:that Tether is actually trying to do, they're trying not only to provide the stable coin,
Speaker:they're actually trying to build an ecosystem around it. One that people actually use to
Speaker:go out and do things in the real world, so to speak. We kind of forget sometimes. So
Speaker:they have apps. There's one, and I don't know how they say it. Actually, it's spelled like
Speaker:the Chinese word for tea, which I don't know if they say it the same way or if it means
Speaker:the same thing, but it's C-H-A-I. It's one of Tera's most popular apps, and you can use
Speaker:that to actually buy movie tickets. So you actually have to have Tera stable coin. In
Speaker:this case, it would be the Tera Kwan, I guess, the South Korean currency. When you have that,
Speaker:when you mint it or when you get that, it actually burns some Luna in the background.
Speaker:So some Luna is destroyed. It's not literally burned. You see that terminology used a lot
Speaker:in crypto, and it simply means destroying, right? So there's Luna that's destroyed to
Speaker:do that, and that's actually kind of the fundamental balance. So we mint the stable coin, we burn
Speaker:Luna. So more stable coin, less Luna. What does that do to the Luna price? It drives
Speaker:it up, which is what we're seeing. The Luna price has been going up a lot lately. So the
Speaker:more usage, higher Luna. The whole system was built actually on top of the Cosmos blockchain
Speaker:ecosystem kind of development system, and it does use proof of stake consensus. So they
Speaker:have validators, and here's another argument about this. There's not that many validators,
Speaker:especially compared to, say, Ethereum has about 3000 validators. They don't have very
Speaker:many. I've got the number in here. There's only 130, so there's not that many. Again,
Speaker:centralized, so to speak. I don't know what the plans are for that, and in the interest
Speaker:of full disclosure, I don't own any Tera. I've actually never owned any. I've never
Speaker:owned any Luna, I should say. I've never owned any. So I do find it interesting. I am very
Speaker:interested in the algorithmic stable coin because of the issues that I see with these
Speaker:fiat-backed stable coins like Tether. All right. So this is all built up as we use the
Speaker:stable coin that's burning Luna and driving up the Luna price. I hope that makes sense.
Speaker:A small portion of that Luna that's actually used, that's burned, so to speak, part of
Speaker:that is actually sent to the community treasury. So that is then distributed to the network
Speaker:essentially to drive things like the validation. I do want to mention another algorithmic
Speaker:stable coin. In fact, I don't know if it preceded Luna or not, or Tera or not, but it was called
Speaker:Iron. It's actually a little famous because it lost its peg, which means, let's say it
Speaker:was pegged to the US dollar, it no longer was worth a dollar. In fact, it crashed from
Speaker:that dollar value to basically zero, wiping out a billion dollars in market cap in a single
Speaker:day because they had what they call poor tokenomics, meaning there was a bug in the code. I don't
Speaker:know exactly what was wrong, but there was certainly a case where it created this chain
Speaker:reaction that caused this drop in value. So that is the downside, so to speak, of an algorithmic
Speaker:stable coin. You've got to be very careful about your smart contract, which is going
Speaker:to be what drives any stable coin, any algorithmic stable coin. If you have an issue with it,
Speaker:then that could cause this de-pegging. Luna is actually now the seventh largest crypto.
Speaker:Let's see, by market cap, I bet you didn't know that, with $33 billion in market cap.
Speaker:That's a lot. The good thing is that market cap, that value, remember we're burning Luna
Speaker:to create the tokens, the stable coin, there's so much value at this point in the Tera network,
Speaker:it will create stability. When I was just talking about the iron protocol, whatever
Speaker:you want to call it, remember I said it went down to nearly zero. It wiped out a billion
Speaker:dollars, so their market cap was a billion dollars. It was one-thirty-third of this.
Speaker:There's a lot more market cap. There's a lot more to back this, so to speak. Tera's moved
Speaker:past what I would consider these early growing pains. It's not to say that they won't ever
Speaker:have any issues, but there's some stability there. They've actually built a really good
Speaker:system. They've got low gas fees. They've got low fees in general, and apparently, even
Speaker:though I haven't used it, certainly, this app is doing really well. From what I understand,
Speaker:it is what I am looking for in a finance app, in a crypto finance app. It's frictionless.
Speaker:It's easy to use. This is something that I'm always looking for. I would love to see this
Speaker:type thing based on the Lightning Network, for example. Lightning right now, and not
Speaker:to get off on this, but it's not really frictionless. We tout it as a payment system, low fees,
Speaker:all that, quick. That's all true, but it's not frictionless. It's not easy to use, and
Speaker:that's the reality. We'd love to see some of that in Lightning or in other ecosystems.
Speaker:Ethereum, sorry. I just thought I'd throw that in there. That's the holy grail. We don't
Speaker:want to make it difficult for our users. Apparently, they've done a pretty good job of that. They've
Speaker:got interoperability with other crypto chains like Ethereum and Binance. There's some Binance
Speaker:and Ethereum Bridge, which is literally a website called bridge.terra.money. You can
Speaker:go there, hook up your wallet, and do your swap. Kind of cool. You can move money in
Speaker:and out of that. They also have an anchor protocol platform that they use to basically
Speaker:provide for returns, investment returns, interest, without having to go out and find your own
Speaker:liquidity pool and do staking and all that. It kind of does that in the background. Both
Speaker:of those projects have done real well. Another one called Mirror allows users to create something
Speaker:that I've never talked about on here, but they're called synthetic assets, which a synthetic
Speaker:asset is one that kind of mirrors what is going on in the real world, so to speak. In
Speaker:this case, it's stock prices. You can create an asset that mirrors the stock price. That
Speaker:lets UST, the Terra stablecoin holders, get exposure to equities, to stocks, which on
Speaker:the one hand is kind of a cool thing. On the other hand, it's actually brought down the
Speaker:ire of the SEC, which is the US Federal Securities and Exchange Commission is what it stands
Speaker:for. They actually subpoenaed one of the founders of Terra. I believe this was about a year
Speaker:ago at a crypto conference and said, we don't like this and you're going to come talk to
Speaker:us. Now, my understanding is Terra's entire project is basically in South Korea. These
Speaker:are South Koreans. They're not US citizens. I may be mistaken in that, but they literally
Speaker:got up on the stage while he was talking and gave him a subpoena. It was incredibly rude
Speaker:if nothing else, but regardless, he ignored it. It was about this Mirror project, so these
Speaker:synthetic assets. See, they don't like the fact that you're not manipulating the stock
Speaker:market with this. Not at all. It's really just taking that data, but they don't like
Speaker:that. That's welcome to the SEC. Talk about, well, I don't want to get off on that. Anyways,
Speaker:that has been ignored. I actually looked it up just a few days ago. Some court judge in
Speaker:New York has now, and I will put a link to this in the show notes, but they've now said,
Speaker:yeah, you've actually got to respond to this. Again, as far as I understand, these are not
Speaker:US citizens, so I don't know how that all works, but whatever. We'll see. Could it cause
Speaker:a problem? Yes, except frankly, all this is over in South Korea and it's all on the internet
Speaker:and it's somewhat decentralized anyways, and what are they going to do? I mean, really.
Speaker:That'll be fun to watch. I suppose it could actually impact the project. I don't really
Speaker:think it will. I've already weaved in my thoughts about the concerns about Terra. Low number
Speaker:of validators. That to me is very disappointing. And in fact, a lot of very few of those validators
Speaker:like the top 10, top 20, they actually hold quite a bit of the delegated Luna supply.
Speaker:So it really is actually even more concentrated than that. We could always find a flaw in
Speaker:the smart contract and cause an issue like what happened with iron at this point. At
Speaker:this point, that's probably a pretty small chance of that, but it's always possible.
Speaker:We'll just have to see. I would have liked to have put some money into Terra quite a
Speaker:while ago and to Luna, I should say quite a while ago. At this point, it's closing in.
Speaker:If it's not surpassed all time highs, I don't know offhand what they are, but the price
Speaker:was at like $88 today when I checked. So it's done quite well. Even in this downturn, it's
Speaker:not done nearly as bad as a lot of projects. For me, I don't even have any money at this
Speaker:point to put into it, but at some point I might put in a small amount to be honest.
Speaker:I certainly would never make it the major part of my portfolio, but it will be interesting
Speaker:to see what happens. I really want to see, I guess if you consider Terra kind of the
Speaker:second generation of algorithmic stable coins coming after things like iron. Iron may have
Speaker:started after Terra for all I know, but apparently they didn't do very well. I'm very interested
Speaker:to see a third generation and specifically I'm looking to see one that's a lot more decentralized.
Speaker:I hope that was helpful. It might be something you want to look at yourself. I do think it
Speaker:has a potential to do well. I do believe its market cap will continue to grow and as it
Speaker:grows that really means that Luna will continue to go up. Remember they're burning Luna whenever
Speaker:the stable coins are minted, so that's cool. It's a built-in kind of deflationary thing
Speaker:similar to what Ethereum will be doing or has implemented with their gas burning fees.
Speaker:We move into kind of the whole ETH 2.0 thing. Another thing I should probably give an update
Speaker:on here at some point. That's where we're at. Interesting stuff. Hope that helps. Let's
Speaker:talk about the market. This week we're going to talk about both the news and the market
Speaker:at the same time because it's very much related. There was no news outside of what I'm sure
Speaker:everybody's already heard about. Russia invaded the Ukraine on February 24th, their time,
Speaker:so it was February 23rd late at night here. I was actually up and I had been watching
Speaker:the markets all day. Things were going down already. The invasion happened and it was
Speaker:very interesting because of course what I expected to happen if the invasion happened,
Speaker:it took a dive right now. All the stock markets are closed, all that, but of course Bitcoin
Speaker:is trading and over the course of the next one, two, three, four hours it dropped from
Speaker:approximately I'm going to just say approximately $37,000 down to $34,300 roughly, $34,200.
Speaker:That was the bottom. It depends on what exchange you were on exactly, but somewhere right around
Speaker:there. Then it started going back up. One interesting thing I noticed is that in less
Speaker:than 24 hours, we had already gone back above that value. In fact, during that hour timeframe,
Speaker:we were up to $38,764. You see this a lot with Bitcoin. You probably see it a lot in
Speaker:the stock market as well. I can talk about Bitcoin maybe a bit better, but you'll see
Speaker:some type of crash happen and then it'll bounce right back. In fact, it might bounce back
Speaker:higher. In this case, I personally wasn't shocked. I certainly wasn't out there giving
Speaker:trading advice. I did buy some at what I thought was the bottom. I put in a small trade. I
Speaker:managed to make some money. I actually got out of it too soon frankly, but I did make
Speaker:some money. At that point, I was actually up and watching. I was very closely monitoring
Speaker:what was going on and I had a stop loss set. If something far more drastic were to happen
Speaker:and it were to go down even worse, I would have stopped out. I would have been okay.
Speaker:Now, since then, this incursion, this invasion, it's rolled on. I don't know what day we're
Speaker:on at this point. Probably, let's see, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Probably day five, I think
Speaker:maybe. The market went sideways for a good bit of the week. The market dropped for a
Speaker:few hours about 24 hours ago and then it started rising. Then early this morning East Coast
Speaker:time, it took off. It kind of went crazy. We had a candle that closed today. The market
Speaker:closes every... You have to have daily closings for your charts. It closes currently at six
Speaker:o'clock Central time, seven o'clock Eastern time in the US. That starts the new day. Yesterday
Speaker:was the last day of February, so that started a new month at the candle closing. We went
Speaker:up like 13, 14% yesterday. It was crazy. There were several candles. The highest candle went
Speaker:from 38,000 to 39,847, almost $2,000 in an hour and ended on that higher side, very much
Speaker:on that higher side.
Speaker:To say that today has been a good day would be good, would be an understatement. We broke
Speaker:some pretty important support levels. You got to understand for the last week, the bears
Speaker:have been screaming that the market was going to continue downwards. Of course, we got this
Speaker:big drop when Russia invades and they act like that was going to be the catalyst for
Speaker:the end. We were going to go hit 30, maybe go hit 20. There were people probably calling
Speaker:for 10K Bitcoin, which I would love, but it was not in the cards, certainly not now. I
Speaker:do not have a real explanation and I have not seen one for why things popped so much
Speaker:today.
Speaker:Now, I can tell you that the market fundamentals, the underlying fundamentals of the market
Speaker:have been very strong for months. We have had all of this bad news going on with Russia
Speaker:really for quite a while now. The stock interest rates, the stock market in general, the interest
Speaker:rates with the Fed Reserve, but that only goes so far. I also think one of the things
Speaker:that came out today, and this is good for Bitcoin, it is probably good for the stock
Speaker:market in general, to be honest, but in the long term, this is bad for the US economy,
Speaker:but because of all the things going on in Russia now, basically the word on the street
Speaker:is that the Fed Reserve is now going to not raise interest rates next month, or well,
Speaker:this month when the podcast comes out. So we have got inflation on the rise, but we
Speaker:are not going to raise interest rates. Now that will mean the stock market, the stock
Speaker:market in general, will go up. Bitcoin will go up because of that, but that is not really
Speaker:a good thing. Other news that has come out that I think has helped this is these economic
Speaker:restrictions that the world in general is putting on Russia. One of the big examples
Speaker:is, while they are freezing the assets of the Russian banks, the larger ones certainly,
Speaker:they are also stopping the SWIFT network, which is what is used to send financial information
Speaker:around the world. It is a standard. It is not kind of a standard. It is a standard.
Speaker:And that has all been stopped. The ruble versus US dollar in particular took a huge nosedive
Speaker:today. So Russia is in for some serious economic consequences for what is going on in the Ukraine.
Speaker:Bitcoin is benefiting, in my opinion, from all of this. So if we can break a few more
Speaker:key levels, we may see some moves right on up to the all-time highs, which would be nice.
Speaker:We are not there yet. We did break some very important levels, $40K, $42.6K is another
Speaker:important one. It actually went all the way up to $44,300. It has fallen back. It is sitting
Speaker:above $43K, fairly comfortably. Ethereum is somewhere right around $3,000, $2,900 right
Speaker:now, actually. So $29K, $20K or so. So they have both done really well. I mentioned, there
Speaker:is a lot of coins that have jumped. Everything in general went up. Now Bitcoin does seem
Speaker:to be leading this rally, as it probably should be at this point.
Speaker:So we will continue to monitor this, of course. This is, in my opinion, a really bullish move.
Speaker:Maybe still, we could get rejected. If we cannot get through a few more levels, it will
Speaker:eventually fall back. We just will not stay up here forever and it will start tracking
Speaker:back down. But for now, it was good, as a kind of a bull, to have a good day. To wake
Speaker:up and see some green and watch that green all day long. These kind of days are fun and
Speaker:kind of, basically, it made up for the fall that happened last week with the invasion.
Speaker:So overall, good week, good month. We printed a green monthly candle in February, meaning
Speaker:so February was green. We came in lower than we left. That is the first time that has happened
Speaker:in four months. So we had three months of red candles. In just a little bit of history,
Speaker:there's never been more than three months of red candles with Bitcoin. So that was a
Speaker:really important thing. It gives us a good start to March. Now, this does not mean that
Speaker:March will be the start of the next bull run. We don't know. It will depend somewhat on
Speaker:the Fed. In mid-March, when they make their announcements, what are they going to do about
Speaker:interest rates? Is it going to be a quarter that they raise it? Is it going to be a half
Speaker:a point? We'll just have to see. It may not be any at all. That's what the speculation
Speaker:is. We will see. But overall, good day. Terrible week, certainly in terms of world news. But
Speaker:there really wasn't any other major crypto news out this week. I think it all got depressed
Speaker:with the Russian news, with the news out of Eastern Europe. But things go on.
Speaker:I did want to make one clarification. I had talked to a listener recently, some emails
Speaker:and that kind of thing. And I told him, and probably even mentioned it here on the podcast
Speaker:at the time, I did not have a Lightning Note. And I realized after the fact, well, like
Speaker:two weeks ago, what did I do? I set up a Lightning Note. I had to do that to be able to take
Speaker:the Streaming Value for Value payments, the Streaming Satoshis. So I do have a Lightning
Speaker:Note at this point. I'm not really routing Satoshis. I'm not using it as a Lightning
Speaker:Note in that sense. It's more like a point of sales. If you want to call it that, I can
Speaker:receive tokens. I can receive Sats, I should say. And I do intend to set it up as a routing
Speaker:note and become part of the network, truly, and participate because I believe in what's
Speaker:going on with Lightning. But for right now, it's a step at a time. And that actually brings
Speaker:up something, you know, of course, this podcast is supported, Value for Value. If you like
Speaker:what you hear, I would love for you to support the podcast. And the way that you can do that,
Speaker:you can go to newpodcastapps.com. You can get a podcasting 2.0 app like Fountain or
Speaker:one of the, there's a number of other apps out there. And you can stream Satoshis. I'm
Speaker:actually going to do a full podcast about this at some point. But one of the things
Speaker:I was thinking about is as people who invest in Bitcoin, who invest in crypto, it's not
Speaker:enough for us just to invest. We need to use it. This isn't gold that we stick away in
Speaker:our chest. I'm not saying that you shouldn't invest in Bitcoin, certainly. But when we
Speaker:have opportunities to use Bitcoin to pay for a service or pay for a product, we should
Speaker:do that. You set aside other money for that. That's not your investing Bitcoin, so to speak.
Speaker:But that helps build the network. That helps in the long run, push up the price of Bitcoin.
Speaker:Just like with Terra, like we were just talking about, when they mint the stablecoin, what
Speaker:does that do? That burns Luna. And what does that do? That drives up the price. When we're
Speaker:out there using the product, streaming Satoshis to a podcast or paying for something in Bitcoin,
Speaker:whatever it is, using Ethereum to, I don't know, if you're interested in digital art,
Speaker:there's all kinds of... If we don't use this stuff, eventually the investment part of it
Speaker:will just kind of run out, if that makes sense. I hope that makes sense. If the usage of that
Speaker:crypto doesn't continue, and I'm not saying Bitcoin's going away, certainly. And whether
Speaker:you stream Sats or not to my show isn't going to solve the Bitcoin. It's not going to make
Speaker:Bitcoin go up or down. But just in general, I just want you to think about that. Maybe
Speaker:we'll talk about that at some point on an episode, because I do actually think that's
Speaker:important. And it's something I'm planning on working on myself, because I'm not the
Speaker:best at it, I'll be honest. Okay, so that's the way you can support the show. And would
Speaker:love to see that. There's other ways you can support a course. I'm always looking for...
Speaker:At this point, I'm looking for help with chapters for the podcast. There's several ways. If
Speaker:you've got some way that you think you can help out, cover art even would just be great.
Speaker:I've talked about all this on past podcasts. Would love to hear from you about that. I
Speaker:always love hearing from you guys. I hear from a few at this point. Hopefully they don't
Speaker:go up. But it's always good to hear. Oh, look at that. I bought Bitcoin through strike.
Speaker:I don't do this on purpose. It's just the time that I record the podcast. It's the time
Speaker:I have set up for my purchase. So it purchased at 43.391. Now, Thursday night, it purchased
Speaker:at 34 something. So again, dollar cost averaging almost $10,000 difference. But I'm not having
Speaker:to guess that bottom, right? It's always good to buy the lowest you can. But if you don't,
Speaker:for most people, the best thing to do is just set up a dollar cost average. Whether you
Speaker:do it daily, like I do in this case, or maybe it's weekly or monthly, over the long run,
Speaker:that will get you the most benefit. Don't try and wait until it's the best time to jump
Speaker:in. The best time to jump in was 10 years ago. Sorry, you missed it. It was no longer
Speaker:the best time to jump in. That train left the station. But ladies and gentlemen, we
Speaker:got a long way to go. Jump on the train and join us on the ride.
Speaker:Okay. If you like the content, I would love to hear from you. You can send me a message,
Speaker:an email at mcintosh at genwealthcrypto.com. Our website, of course, is at genwealthcrypto.com.
Speaker:I'm on Twitter at McIntosh Fintech. I would love to get reviews of the podcast on the
Speaker:Apple Podcasts review page. You can leave a review there. The more reviews we get, more
Speaker:visibility the podcast has. And of course, please tell your friends about the Generational
Speaker:Wealth Cryptocurrency podcast. I hope this has been helpful. Now go out and make it a
Speaker:great week.