One of the most common complaints I hear about investing in crypto is that it's too late. It's simply not! And in this episode I break down the statistics and numbers behind the Crypto Twitter meme "Bitcoin is in the same market size as the Internet in 1997." It turns out that it's true! I"ll cover the implications of that and where Crypto usage will go from here.

Links

Bitcoin adoption rate

https://www.fxstreet.com/cryptocurrencies/news/bitcoin-on-track-for-mass-adoption-as-it-grows-faster-than-the-internet-202102100825

Matter Labs

https://cryptobriefing.com/ethereum-scaling-solution-zksync-raises-50m

Taproot activation:

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/taproot-activation-brings-massive-upgrades-to-bitcoin-2021-06-12

Zimbabwe

https://coingeek.com/zimbabwe-weighing-btc-as-legal-tender-heres-why-it-shouldnt

I can be reached by email at mcintosh@genwealthcrytpo.com and on twitter at @McIntoshFinTech. Looking forward to hearing from you!

https://genwealthcrypto.com

Welcome to the Generational Wealth with Cryptocurrency Podcast.

I'm your host, McIntosh, and today we're going to talk about it not being too late.

What do you mean it's not too late?

McIntosh, you come up with these crazy titles.

Well, okay, I'll admit to that.

It's giving you a little insight into my brain, but in this case, the title is not crazy.

I have people that they act like it's too late.

Bitcoin's at $65,000, Ethereum's almost at $5,000.

It's too late to invest in these assets, McIntosh.

What should I do?

You should invest in those assets.

You have to understand, even though where we are, we've come a long way on this journey.

Bitcoin, 12 years, Ethereum, you know, six years, right?

We have a long way to go.

Before we dive into that, though, I want to give you guys a bit of news.

I'm going to go ahead and break this at the top of the show instead of the bottom.

We are actually going to move the podcast.

As you probably know, we typically release on Monday morning.

I record on Sunday night and we push out the podcast first thing on Monday morning.

Of course, we've not quite made that date a few times, but we try and we've been pretty

consistent.

Well, I found some data, came across some research showing that people don't actually

listen to those Monday podcasts so well, and one of the things I have noticed, we've had

some great download numbers.

I'm so happy with where we're at with our downloads and I so appreciate all of our listeners,

but I have noticed that on Mondays, typically our numbers don't take off.

We will not have very many downloads on Monday and then they'll start to pick up on Tuesday

and then by Wednesday, they get going pretty good and Thursday and Friday are pretty good

and Saturday sometimes is pretty good Sunday.

It slows down and then we're right back to Monday.

Turns out Monday is not a good day, so we're going to move the podcast.

We're going to move it to Wednesday, so we're going to drop this podcast on Monday like

we normally do.

I'm actually going to do a special one for Wednesday morning.

Hope you listen to that as well and then going forward, we'll be doing that on Wednesdays.

Just trying to take advantage of what's out there.

Sometimes our information is time sensitive and I want people to pick it up as soon as

possible, so we'll work with that.

All right, so going back to our topic, it's not too late.

I love data.

I love, love, love data.

I love analytics because analytics can prove things.

I don't have to think, I don't have to guess, I don't have to postulate.

I can know by analytics where we've been and very potentially where we're going and one

of the best Bitcoin analytics person is a gentleman by the name of Willie Wu.

There's been a meme going around the crypto Twitter that crypto, that Bitcoin really is

at the state of the internet in 1997 and Willie backs that up with some data.

He basically says that the internet right now in terms of users in 1997 is where we're

at in 2021.

Going back in the past, you can then determine where this might go in the future.

He postulates, he theorizes that in 2025 Bitcoin will be at the state of the internet in 2005

and then in 2028, it'll be 2010.

Now, I remember the internet in 1997.

The internet in 1997, certainly in terms of users was nothing compared to where it is

now and there's some numbers in an article that I'm going to talk about in just a minute

to back that up.

It also wasn't as sophisticated.

If you remember Amazon, for example, was around in 1997.

You could go buy print books there, yay, print books, have those shipped to your house and

I use that service because I was buying tech books then just like I am now, computer books

and they weren't available many times at my local bookstore, so I would go to Amazon and

buy them.

Great place to do that.

What do we have on Amazon now?

You've got Kindle, you've got TVs, you've got any household item you need, you've got books

of course, you've got thousands and I don't even know, it's probably millions to be honest

of items available on Amazon and their stock price.

I looked it up back in 1997 in May, I think it was, the stock price was $18.

The statistic I saw was that in today's pricing, if you'd bought 55 shares of Amazon stock

at $18, I think it was, it's worth $2 million today.

See, we think that Bitcoin right now is expensive, it's not.

It's at that internet 1997 price, unless Bitcoin were to go away or veer off course somehow.

So that means that assuming that Bitcoin doesn't go off the rails, which is certainly not looking

likely, that in a few years that it will be at the same place that Amazon is now and your

stock from right now that was worth that $15 Amazon stock will be worth $2 million.

Do you see the corollary?

Understand and there's data, I'll talk about that in just a second from this second article

to back this up.

The adoption of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general is much, much faster than the adoption

rate of the internet.

And the adoption rate of the internet was crazy.

See back in 1997, the adoption rate wasn't that great.

It really took off around 2000 through 2010.

And then it even went faster after that.

So we're not there yet.

We're 1997, just keep that in mind, we're 1997, Bitcoin's at 65,000.

I don't care.

I don't know where the price of Bitcoin is going, but I don't think that stock analysts

back in 1997 when Amazon was $15 or $18 a share, it would have been very hard for them

to conceive of a $3,500 Amazon stock, which according to this website is what it closed

at Friday.

So even though Bitcoin right now is at $6,500 or $65,000, I don't know where it's going

to end up, but if it tracks the way that it's been, it's going to be a lot and you're not

too late.

You may never own a full Bitcoin and that's okay.

Each Bitcoin divisible into 100 million Satoshis, you can buy a dollars worth of Satoshi.

You can go to Cash App.

I helped somebody set up Cash App this week to buy some Bitcoin.

You could actually put in like five bucks and buy it.

You could DCA every day, $5.

Stop going to Starbucks and buying your $5 coffee, buy your Bitcoin.

I've seen what would happen if you did that for like two years, the number it's mind boggling

the difference that you can make.

And I'm not, everybody has their circumstances.

I'm not telling you, I'm certainly not telling you what to do.

I will tell you this in my situation at my age, my family situation and all that kind

of stuff.

I'm not a hundred percent in crypto.

I'm not, you'll have, you'll hear people tell you, well, I'm a hundred percent in crypto.

And well, we'll talk about that in just a second.

But I'll tell you what I'm not in something like bonds, right?

US bonds, the US is inflationary right now.

The government data, which is probably is actually very underreported.

They admit how they do their statistics and they cherry pick is what they do.

But even then six and a half percent, which means that bonds are, when you buy a bond,

it's going to be worth less when you pull it out or whatever.

I wouldn't buy a bond.

I invest in the stock market.

I'm pretty leery about that at this point, to be honest, but I still do.

Everybody has a different risk profile that they're willing to tolerate.

If I were 25 years old and single and understood what I know right now, I'll be honest, I would

be dumping everything I could into crypto.

I would, my job, I'd work, I'd probably work a second job.

They would all go, I'd pay my rent, I'd eat ramen noodles, but because I would believe

and it most likely would be true that within a couple of years I would be financially independent

and never have to work for anybody again if I didn't choose.

And that's a stunning thing to be able to say.

But there's certainly we've had people who've done it.

We understand that we're not at the end of this game.

The data shows us that we're not even in the middle.

And we're not going to understand the things that are going to be done with crypto in the

next five to 10 years that we think NFTs are crazy.

We haven't talked about NFTs a whole lot.

Actually a listener was asking about that.

We will be doing that soon, I promise.

It was already on my list, but it is something we need to talk about.

There's new, I mean like metaverse stuff, right?

This stuff is, Facebook changed their name to metaverse because of this hype really,

which is kind of ridiculous, but whatever.

But the metaverse stuff is, so you're going to bring in all this gaming stuff and gaming

is a huge industry.

It's all getting pulled in.

Crypto is, it's almost like this black hole.

It's just starting to suck everything in.

And as it does, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

And the more you put in, the earlier, the more leverage you have.

Financially independent, retire early, fire, it's a movement of young people.

I love it.

I wish it had been around and I would have listened to it when I was younger.

I didn't, it wasn't around.

Do the work early and retire and do what you want.

I like my job.

I like what I do.

But if I could just go off and, I don't know, paint sunsets at Lake Tahoe, I might choose

to do that.

So anyways, I don't know, I got off on this tangent.

The thing is, don't be, don't be the person who says, well, it's too late because you'll

go back to what you're doing.

You'll come back in five years.

You'll come back in 10 years.

The price will be 10 X, a hundred X from where it is now.

And even though that may not be the end, you're going to, it would be that much more difficult

to get back in.

Don't do it.

You put in what you feel like that you can and the way, here's the way that I always

tell people is your life going to materially change if this goes to zero?

Well, no.

Okay.

Then you're good.

That's how much you can put in.

Don't put every, do not sell your house and put everything into crypto.

Don't it's too risky.

Now again, 25 years old living on somebody's couch, maybe hopefully at 25, you're not living

on somebody's couch, but you know, put everything into crypto that you can.

Stop buying Starbucks.

Stop buying whatever the expensive thing is that you're buying.

Put that money into Bitcoin.

Think about getting a second job.

And when I say Bitcoin, I mean, Bitcoin is part of a bigger portfolio, but you get the

point.

Do the work now.

That way you can have fun later.

A lot sooner than you think you can.

All right.

So I do want to go over this second article, this actual article, which came out earlier

this year about this same idea.

And I wanted to, they have a lovely little chart in here talking about Bitcoin adoption,

internet adoption rate, charting it all out.

There's some points in here I want to make though.

Bitcoin has approximately the same number of users right now as the internet in 1997.

However, Bitcoin's mass adoption is growing at a faster rate than when compared to the

internet.

It is projected that in the next four years, Bitcoin will have a billion users.

That's a staggering number.

A billion users using Bitcoin, using Lightning Network, that technology right there.

And I've said this before, it will revolutionize the Bitcoin chain.

It will revolutionize how people, I honestly hope that Ethereum or some other platform

comes up with something similar, but there's not right now.

It is an awesome project.

It gives people the ability to control their own finances.

Everybody in El Salvador, Bitcoin wallet, they can take Bitcoin for their coffee, for

their papooses is what they call them, the street food, person to person, no bank involved.

It's disintermediated.

And these people who by and large are unbanked are coming on board at very, very fast numbers.

And it will change their life over the next few years.

El Salvador is a great experiment in a number of ways, but it certainly is in terms of this.

And so far, things are looking really good.

All right, if I don't have thought about this, number of new addresses joining the Bitcoin

network illustrates how fast Bitcoin is going to, is reaching mass adoption.

So there's a number of new wallets, basically.

Fast nodes on chain metrics show that these new addresses were hitting 610,000 at the

peak of the bull run in 2017, so four years ago at the top of the market.

At the time of this writing of this article, the network growth is increasing by approximately

560,000 addresses or wallets, again, per day, massive, massive numbers joining every day

half a million, more than half a million, incredible stuff.

Okay, I hope that's helpful.

We're going to have another, like I said, we're going to have another podcast on Wednesday.

So I'm going to cut this a little short.

So I'm not up all night editing this.

There are some news items that I want to go through again, one item of note, we will be

moving to Wednesdays.

A couple of weeks ago, we talked about layer two solutions for Ethereum.

One of the companies that's working on that, it's called Matter Labs.

They're working on the ZK zero knowledge protocol roll up.

They raised $50 million.

So that's actually really cool.

Obviously, they've got a bit more money to hire more people, do more things, hopefully

get that continue to move that project along.

I'll have a link for that and show notes.

One of the things I did want to mention, it is starting to look like Zimbabwe may approve

Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general, maybe a few solutions as legal tender.

Now that's, it's almost bordering on rumor.

I'd heard it and then I heard a retraction of it.

And then I went up before the podcast and looked it up again.

It looks like it might actually be true.

It's certainly still in the talks, but maybe they're the next country.

New York and Miami earlier this week in the United States, New York city, Miami, there

are two major cities on the East coast and they had mayoral elections and both of the

candidates at one said that they would be accepting their salary in Bitcoin for like

the first three months.

Both are looking to bring a crypto innovation tech type stuff to their cities.

Miami is actually, frankly, probably the hotspot of the United States right now.

Maybe Austin kind of a close second, I don't know.

New York is certainly trying being a financial capital or the financial capital that it is.

I bet they make a good run at it.

So that would be good, glad to see that.

Big thing just happened last night, Bitcoin's first upgrade, I believe in four years.

So SegWit was the last big upgrade.

They had one called Taproot.

So it was, so there was a number of features of it, security, transaction, it will be lowering

the transaction fees, a number of things.

I don't, I'm not giving it justice.

I will provide a link in the show notes to a good summary of it.

I did again, I think I mentioned this earlier, pretty sure I did.

On Wednesday, it's been an interesting week in terms of the price of Bitcoin, specifically

on Wednesday, there was an inflation report, the United States released inflation at six

and a half percent, within hours Bitcoin hit an all time high and I do believe those two

things were related.

And then a few hours later, there was a report from China that Evergrande, the real estate

company that we've discussed several times has defaulted and the markets crashed.

The markets crashed, the stock market, Bitcoin went down, not a huge amount, but it did go

down.

By the way, the reasons why they're scared, I've said this in summary before, but basically

they have $300 billion in debt.

I did find where they said there was 19 billion of that in offshore money.

I've said when I've talked about this before, the offshore part is the part that kind of

worries me about how it would affect the US market.

If it's really only 19 billion out of that, to be honest, yes, that's going to hurt, but

we've got other bigger issues going on right now with supply chain and interest rates and

these kinds of things.

I'm not really worried about that.

I don't think that's going to tank the stock market.

Now, will China and the Asian markets be a mess?

Yes, they probably will.

So if you're in that market, you might want to think about that.

Might want to move some things to Bitcoin.

Now, I know that's difficult in mainland China, but just saying.

All right, and finally, Bitcoin closed the week at $65.5K, so $65,500, which is an all-time

high for the week.

There's this concept, daily weekly highs monthly.

So the weekly is done on Sundays at 0100 hours UTC, 0100, zero hours, like midnight UTC.

So really Monday morning, Sunday night, Monday morning, UTC time.

I think it's around 8 o'clock East Coast time, this time of year anyways, in the United States.

And tonight it closed at $65.5K.

That was an all-time high for a weekly close.

So even though we've been higher, that was an all-time high for a weekly close.

So Bitcoin just keeps right on chugging along and you'll see it.

It's going to happen.

It will consolidate for a while and very soon maybe it's going to rock it off once again.

One last note, throw this in, where is Bitcoin being adopted?

I want you to think about this.

Countries where it's being adopted, there's insolvent banks, there's insolvent currencies.

You've got hyperinflation.

You've got what they call capital flight, capital meaning money basically, leaving the country.

Governmental corruption, confiscation and financial collapse.

So you see places like El Salvador, they were worried about hyperinflation.

That's why they did it.

They were tied to the US dollar.

The US dollar, the Federal Reserve has printed a tremendous amount of money over the last

few years.

Multiple presidencies, this isn't a Republican or a Democrat thing, people.

Wake up.

Sorry, do I need to repeat that?

Wake up.

So anyways, they were getting the inflation without the benefit of a stimulus check to

put it in simple terms.

So they chose Bitcoin.

We'll see how that works out.

Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe has been a, that's why Zimbabwe is talking about this.

Zimbabwe has been a mess.

I mean, they've had super inflation issues.

They've had capital flights.

They frankly have governmental corruption to an extent and you're seeing a wide adoption

of Bitcoin.

I think it's actually almost funny.

It's not funny, but it's funny if you know what I mean, that these countries that many

people would call third world are the ones who are adopting Bitcoin.

And to be honest, if the United States, Canada, China, you know, some of these major European

countries, France, England, if they don't come on board, they're going to get left behind.

And I mean, that's almost, you see why that's comical?

It is in my head.

I don't know.

It's weird.

I'm going to leave things on that note.

I hope everyone has a great couple of days and I will talk to you again really soon.

If you want to reach out to me, you can reach out to me at McIntosh at genwealthcrypto.com.

Again, we've got our new website, genwealthcrypto.com and on Twitter at mcintosh.fintech.