Post game
Crytpo is a symptom of people being always online
We are all children of the internet now. Ansem’s story is similar to my own and probably most of the people who are full time in crypto. We grew up in a online-all-the-time world where the immediacy of everything transcended boundaries in normal life.
World of Warcraft is one one of the most popular online MMORPGs in the world to this date. So many people that are deep in crypto played the game maniacally during their younger years. WoW was an online world that forced mass cooperation amongst teams to take down the hardest bosses. It brought together millions of people in singular nightly goals. Vitalik even credited the game for driving his initial desire to build Ethereum.
Now 20 years on from its launch, internet life is so pervasive that we don’t even think about it anymore. It just is. But the ideas learned from the early days of persistent online gameplay still run deep. If I can buy a $10,000 item in the WoW store at 4am, why can’t I send a similar amount of money from my bank? Madness really.
Bitcoin must lead the next bull cycle
Banks are collapsing, payment rails are under pressure in the wake of Covid-19, the Russian war, and Chinese regional expansion. America’s response to every crisis is further weaponization of the dollar. And while this might achieve short term national strategy objectives, in the long term it dissuades dollar usage abroad and could lead to the end of the dollar over the next century.
This narrative is exactly what Bitcoin bulls have been waiting for. Stress on the banking system and geopolitical tensions should push people into Bitcoin as a flight to safety. We’ve seen some inflows into Bitcoin, as its 80% off of its lows at $15,000, but the next leg up to $100k will require new broader narratives and a fresh path for capital to flow into it.
Ansem makes the point that Bitcoin has to lead in this macro cycle and onwards. While the world burns, Bitcoin should be a flight to safety.
Alt L1s vs L2s
It’s extremely hard to build network security for Alt-L1s. Every new network has to compete for investment and builders to remain competitive. Usually these L1s have massive ecosystem grant pools to dole out to promising builders with the hope of one of them striking it big
But we may be in a new regime with the launch of Optimism and Arbitrum tokens. Now builders don’t have to leave Ethereum’s inner circle. Builders can focus on doing what they do best. Security is guaranteed by the base layer. It’s a nice seperation that reduces fees based in ETH.
The question now might be “what is the best L2 infra look like?” Is it a generalized roll-up? ZK EVM? modular roll-ups? It’s too early to tell, but these new additions might soon turn other L1s to being less secure side chains against ETH.
Mobile Thesis
We have to solve crypto UX for mobile if its ever going to take off. Right now most mobile apps are pretty obtuse to use and require a lot of patience. If crypto is ever going to succeed, we will need better apps so any normie feels right at home.
But there are so many questions when it comes to mobile about security. How are keys supposed to be held? What happens if you lose your phone? What sort of hardware protects your private keys? These are super basic questions that have been solved on desktop/laptops already, but don’t have a great answer for mobile.
Ansem thinks the Solana phone might be a good option or the Saga phone.
Nation states will buy Bitcoin
Ansem thinks that eventually all countries will hold Bitcoin and other digital assets like the hold gold. While this has been widely discussed in the Bitcoin before, his smart take was that the biggest impact will be countries will start to compete in the mining space to protect their investments.
Nations will be incentivized to running mining operations so that they can maintain the network their assets are on. This might be direct operation of the infrastructure, or providing a means for private entities to do so with added tax breaks for labor and electricity.
