Snakes and Daggers - Crazy Crypto Times and Some Thoughts on Playing Safe.

Dear Steemies!

Keep it simple so you can use your brain for other things is the theme of this piece. I'm trying to understand the history, the current political craziness and the future of this social/economic/computational tech.

Cryptocurrencies are sort of a religion. Well, more like totally a religion and they also have the ability to really mess with a lot of really scary things to mess with. Like jobs, money, governments, why we go to war and with whom, etc... Normally, as a recovering techno utopian, I find cryptocurrencies flow into my gullet like a delicious cake with some libertarian nightmare sprinkled on top. But right now, it's a pivotal time in cryptoland. The religions once neatly seperated by oceans have come in contact and it's crazy. Like, really really crazy (Vladan, lookin' at you). As someone actively involved in mining, investing, and coding it's making me reconsider my salvation from tyranny by our decentralized prophet Sir Trustious Automaton. Someone call Eminem, I need a real hero.

Why is it crazy? Well Bitcoin started tip toeing into the pool of popular consciousness without any underwear and has been getting a major ego boost from all the attention it's gotten. But deep in it's core it doesn't love itself enough so it hasn't been able to handle the heat. Now it's attempting to get out of the kitchen and let a stronger fork (a fork is a upgraded version of the bit software, because remember, there's no App Store that pushes updates to all the Bitcoin miners[22] patching bugs and optimizing code) manage to not burn steak. But it couldn't get out of the way - it was too wide to get out the door, had too many fans and sent too many naked pictures to all of them to leave so abruptly. Also, it seems at least some of the schizophrenic voices in BTC's head are whispering "burn it all. to the ground."(https://bravenewcoin.com/news/segwit2x-hard-fork-abandoned-what-happened-and-why/)

Let's take a few steps back though and talk about the thing we're talking about. What the hell is money anyway and why do we need a new kind? In essence money is a thing that be used to 1) transact and 2) to store value. Money has been all sorts of things like gold, salt, or squirrel pelts or 1KWH[2]. The two properties of money are very useful, if only you believe in them hard enough. So, I guess bitcoin is a religion taken on faith that people came to be baptized through the torrential downpour of growing dollar bills, secure transactions and privately owned stores of value. I can see it now.

Satoshi[3]'s dream, it seems, was that bitcoin will come to exact revenge for the sins of our leaders against The People. After Angela Merkel, Obama bail, and others bailed out the banks bitcoin got it's engines revved. We know this from the Blook of Genesis: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block
In Chapter 0 Verse 0 we read "04ffff001d0104455468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f72206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73 OR The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"
Satoshi has encoded this hex in HEX for blockchain on every fork to carry the message to a tiny fraction of the population who knows how to convert hex so that they may to carry as witness in perpetuity the sins of our greed just so we can get into an ICO bubble: https://www.coindesk.com/mit-media-lab-joi-ito-icos-attract-wrong-people/

So does bitcoin qualify as a money? Does it transact? Does it store value? Well, it used to when it could handle the traffic. Now it seems the speculation that's driving adoption is forcing bitcoin to grow into a store of value without useful transaction speeds/costs. Why is this happening? I'd say it's the greed that bitcoin was designed to counter that has risen from the grave to Scrooge us into recognizing the folly of our ways and to thusly invest now in fair-coin.org and https://humaniq.com instead. Right BTC looks pretty sketch to me and even though all the Technical Analysis in the world says BTC is where it's at, I've stayed out.

Another reason to be wary about entering into bitcoin now is this odd thing called tether which has been flowing into Bitcoin by the millions of dollars. Tether is this (weird)USD variant that one company, Bitfinex, seems to be creating and using to prop up the BTC price party, woo! My guess the neighbors aren't too happy: https://coinreport.net/tethered-to-reality/ So for the last 4 months any real alternative has been super crushed due to BTC's massive inflation (opportunity for altcoin buying?)

Oh yeah, and by the way, then that same kinda weird fake united states dollar clone stuff got hacked just now - somehow BTC's price don't care though: https://cryptovest.com/news/tethers-usdt-hacked-and-locked-what-follows/

So now bitcoin is having a hard time evolving into a currency that is useful for all the thousands of people hearing about it for the first time while shopify (and Amazon is rumored to be considering it soon) is allowing it's users to use transact with it on their site. Although I'm not sure it adds up: 4 dollar shipping, 4 dollar transaction fee in 1 hour... mmm Maybe not.

All the hungry hungry Altcoin(anything not btc) hippos underfed for years in Bitcoin's shadow who've been clanging around with their tin cans in the echo chambers of github now get their time of day! Now they smell blood! Their fangs glistening with digital saliva.

EXCEPT WAIT! From left field some guy named Bitcoin Jesus (yes, for real, I swear. BCJ https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-jesus-calvin-ayre-media-say-bitcoin-cash-is-the-only-blockchain) and a cohort of people from OG-(original gangsta)-bitcoin have taken a potential solution(the bitcoin cash fork) to the bitcoin decrepitation problem and they seem to have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into it from their BTC holdings to try to pump the other side of a two sided balloon by squeezing one side into the other. It sorta looks like a butt when they're even though, haha.

Some have seen the giant spike in price and hashing power[33] die down and now dismiss Bitcoin Cash and are warming their hands over the embers. To others, he process isn't over and we have some moves to make this Thanksgiving (for goodness sake I just want to say we Killed the Native Americans, ok? Killed them dead. This holiday should remind us of where America comes from. Sorry, no jokes here.) Here's some argument/evidence/rumor (buy the roomba): https://pastebin.com/aiAE30S2
The way these things are written feel so skeezy I can't feel honest with the coin in hand, it's gotten ugly folks. Here's some evidence of community manipulation: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7eil12/evidence_that_the_mods_of_rbitcoin_may_have_been/

For some in-depth theory on BCH: https://www.tradingview.com/u/RiversAndMountains/ read his writing here: https://www.yours.org/content/stay-composed-amidst-the-storm-b049fa6e2cbb
For some clean charts:
https://www.tradingview.com/u/DianKemala/
https://www.tradingview.com/u/DLavrov/

There's also lots of other fishy business coming from China's mining community, especially from some dude named Jihan who runs bitmain which builds and operates a vast amount of the BTC mining operation (https://twitter.com/jihanwu/status/923865432913731584?). Some conspiracy nuts (I on the other hand am just a nut) believe there's some "China is taking over the worldness" to this move to flip BTC to BCH. I don't know, but it does seem like the sky is falling. And china does look like a chicken... Coincidence?!

()

Regardless of intent or country or Jesus, the effort at overturning bitcoin has seems to have had some sort of effect. At least enough to freak out some people about BTC drop the price a couple notches - but then then business as usual as BTC continued to gobble up all the fresh blood(I mean money) clueless about the chaos underneath the asset they are buying. Told you it was crazycrypto times! Congratulations on buying your first bitcoin! I'm terrified for you if you bought after all the forks.

PS, there's this thing called ethereum and it's cool. And the founder realllly needs to work out: https://fitvitalik.io/ If you want some ether, paypal me at this email address and I'll teach you to make a wallet and send you some. I promise, it'll be fun! You can Trust me. (Do you feel like you can trust me? If so, why? If not, why?)

These last 3 weeks will go down in history that's for sure. At least if you're an ultra crypto dork, or some sort of academic historian studying money. Anyway! It was cool to me, I'm waiting for someone to make the movie! For now, we will transition off away from narrative to the part of the email where I offer a modest proposal/suggestion fo you to research and consider. This next stage of this email which shall be indented to put it in it's proper place as something that is not a ramble. Perhaps it is something of great importance. Perhaps this is the only part of this entire email that you should read at all. And if you've made it this far. I... I don't know what to tell you, you warm my heart. :*

************ PRACTICAL STUFF HERE************
I wanted to share something with you that I've found that seems to be a pretty smart move to get into crypto without complications. It's an automatically reconfigured portfolio of the top 20 coins every week, that way you distribute the risk and make sure that whatever is growing at this time you catch some of it: crypto20.com

Why use this rather than something like? thetoken.io or any other actively traded funds? 
1. It's way cheaper to pay machines (yearly maintenance fees are low)
2. It's been proven over and over that active trading is really a gamble and often wind up being a bit worse than properly balanced funds. Read "Money Master The Game" or this paper: http://mkwinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/SPIVA2015.pdf for more info. 

Find it all at the http://crypto20.com page!

An alternate strategy to squeeze a bit more juice from your coins could be to also get some managed funds: thetoken.io and try both and pray that all the million and one ways things can go wrong don't. 

Before we conclude we should put some useful advice here for those who aren't too keen on all the risk involved in investing in something that doesn't exist and no one really owns that sort of self operates in a web of incentives riding atop of people's greed, like a spider web trapping the small flies who come to the swamp to feed. So here's something totally legit and normal that can make you money playing in the "real world". It's a trading tip taken from the gold rush. You don' gotta mine the gold to make the money. You could sell the miners their picks and prostitutes. So, back to faith, if you believe crypto currencies will take off, a great opportunity is available for investing in companies that will win when the coins start rolling uphill. A few right off the bat:

Nvidia - huge boosts with all the GPU sales that run the mining machines 
Power companies? 
Security companies that help corporations not get their crypto stolen. We don't have federally insured banks don'tchyaknow: CyberArk
Merchant companies that take cryptocurrencies early: Shopify
I've taken liberty to steal this idea from someone else who's stolen this idea: http://d8yoo85ikfg26.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/BackDoorCrypto.pdf

Hope you enjoyed this edition. More thoughts later after I ponder the usefulness of smallcap crypto and how long it takes fingernails to decompose.

PS, if you're planning to invest without actually using cryptocurrencies for anything you will be far more likely to make a mistake with your decision since you can't feel the value it provides viscerally. Please aquire some crypto, buy a pizza, or for the love of Bitcoin Jesus, hodl or something.

With great ANTicipation for the mounting chinese strategy and greetings to our fair ladies of the Russian and Chinese financial federation. May the sun forever shine on the seas of PV.
+Bilal Ghalib

This is a lot of stuff to have on one's mind. So while I've been thinking about trading there's a growing part of my brain that says:
KISSYBCDOT! That's how we say "keep it simple so you can use your brain for other things" in The Industry.

If this has been useful or entertaining, you can chuck some coins at me here:
bitcoin: 3PcZiDQ252bPFrxdmmm5r523qihQPqkQjh
ether: 0xB756AF9952a48dCB0c9Ff696B183B47BbED272e7
and if you send me some $ in paypal, I'll send you some ether so you can send me some ether, get it? Back and forth forever coin (someone go do that). And if you want you can send some funds just so you can start messing around with things like: metamask.io
paypal: [email protected]

Anyone wanna translate to عربي؟

[2] Kilowatt hours
[3] Satoshi is a mysterious person/entity who created the Bitcoin protocol by skillfully combining incentives design, cryptography, game theory into a self perpetuating bootstrapping honey badger. You can peruse his(its) history here: I'd start with some quotable quotes: http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/quotes/
[22] A miner is a symbiotic relationship between three parties, a computer, a human, and the humans desire for profit. The "Miner" after choosing a suspected profitable coin to "mine" then runs code that operates the network validating transactions, hosting files all without the need for the users to trust anyone. If people want I find this part fascinating and can get into it for the next email :).