I’ve held cryptocurrency since 2013, when I met Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong at a political fundraising party at The Mars Bar in San Francisco, and for a fundraiser for Bryon Parker, who was running for Mayor of Oakland. No, Bryon did not win, Libby Schaaf did – and I did, too, in a way. What brought Brian and I together was a mutual friend there at Mars Bar, and in turn, we both knew Reddit Co-Founder Steve Huffman. I happened to interview him at the party thrown for him in 2007, when Steve moved to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Anyway, out of that came, for me, a constant interest and involvement in cryptocurrency investing. In retrospect, I should have and still should focus on mining. Especially now. After this morning’s read, and my daily look, at the cryptocurrency market from the perspective of the Coinbase online trading desk, the long term forecast for the change in the direction of value of any one example is down.
I feel like my job (other than running Zennie62Media, Inc.) is trying to mitigate loss: finding the right cryptocurrency to switch over to at the right time to cause a jump-start in the growth of my portfolio. The good news is, I just did that, but the bad news is, I believe this is a short-term situation before I find another horse to ride.
For me, Coinbase is the only way to go because you can transfer your cryptocurrency to your bank account at anytime, or use it or your other holdings, to buy other cryptocurrencies. Thus, I’m not going to look for another place to play hide and seek with opportunities: if I can’t dump the results into my bank account immediately, what’s it worth? Really?
That way of thinking has kept me with Coinbase. As Brian is working to expand the choice of 70 cryptocurrency offerings, a positive future is always in the. well, future. But is it? Why does it seem to me that some group out there, perhaps governments, are working to squeeze us out of this business? Let me tell you something. The reason most get into this is that like stocks, it looked like crypto had the chance to establish a long track record of increasing in value over time. Well, the reality is not so – right now, it’s the reverse.
I think what will change this is some nascent technical development, or governments like the United States making a concerted effort to build cryptocurrency as a monetary alternative. Personally, I think the news is that governments are taking the reverse action.
Consider that the crypto crackdown in China is called just that. As of we’re all kids playing too much in the backyard rather than getting any real work done. Or take the Federal Reserve singling out a surge in crypto asset prices as a sign investors were engaging in risk-taking. The governments do not seems to ask why, only to fear that it is happening.
I will tell you the why: it’s not just the chance of high return, but the fact that the cryptocurrency game is accessible to Middle America and black, Asian, and Latino America in a way stocks are not: without the high upfront fees to establish accounts. One can get it and get out with relative ease. If one knows what they’re doing, its possible to gain money to buy basic needs like groceries and gas on a monthly basis.
That dynamic is good for the local economy but the trouble is too many cities don’t seem to practice economic development like we used to in the 20th Century. Their finger, especially in Oakland in a post-California Redevelopment world, is off the button of wealth-creation by public investment in business, either via loans or grants. It’s no wonder the U.S. Government let the private sector run the Small Business Administration’s Payroll Protection Program loans, and realize a scenario where the business rich got richer – then stopped the program, even during the Biden Administration.
All of this is happening as tech takes more and more basic labor jobs away and fails to replace those jobs with new opportunities at a greater rate. Then pundits ask why our labor force participation rates are taking a hit, or wonder why so many middle class white men were persuaded to storm the U.S. Capital by then-President Donald Trump. It’s our obvious lack of desire to form an economy that promises increases in wealth for the many, rather than the few.
And when Democrats want to get office, they, we, my party, has only the desire to “drain the rich” (read, Republicans) as a solution. That was never the way to build an economy, and it’s not going to work now. The way is for American government to invest in human capital and small business, and now – and not take the pedal off the metal until our economy is fully restored. Right now, it’s simply not there.
The simple fact that the American economy is being held up, indeed pushed up, by economic stimulus programs tells you not to stop them because doing so will cause a terrible downfall. The fact is that The Pandemic has wrecked our economic system and we’re not out of the woods. That $10 trillion economic stimulus I called for last year was, if I may say, correct: the legs of our system have been broken. One-third of our population has moved to new places. People are trying to stay healthy – some refuse to wear masks even as it’s clear we still have the virus problem.
In all of this, the one way we can make things better is simply with money. Sorry for the cold shower, but that’s a fact. That’s why crypto has become so popular: people are seeking a way out of this mess and the government is not providing it. But the government should not take it away, either.
Stay tuned.