Another session with a variety of topics discussed including:
Crypto News
Crypto Predictions
DePIN (Decentralized physical infrastructure)
HiveMapper Crypto
World Mobile Token
Bitcoin Prices
Bitcoin Halving
Crypto Growth and wallet adoption
The Metaverse
Real World Asset Tokenization
The new trifecta of Blockchain, IoT and AI
If you’re interested in learning more about crypto and digital assets, then this is the video for you! Each week, we’ll bring you the latest news and views, so you can stay up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in the world of crypto and digital assets. Thanks for watching!
#Crypto Club and #digitalassets weekly meetup on #zoom where we discuss all things #crypto !
As always, the discussion is driven by the participants, so, if you’d like to join a future call then register via https://www.meetup.com/bucks-cryptocurrency-club/
Open to #crypto novices and experts alike!
If you’d like to join us at a future meeting, register via https://www.meetup.com/Bucks-Cryptocurrency-Club/
Hello and welcome to this the crypto club and digital assets weekly catch up on Zoom it is Sunday the 24th December 2023 and as is always case we never quite know what we’re going to be talking about we hold these meetings every week every Sunday evening 7:00 p.m. till 8:00 p.m. and everyone’s
Welcome to join whether you’re a novice or an expert as a result it means we get to talk about some really interesting stuff either at the really basic level and you’re just beginning to learn about crypto or if you’re running a project and you want to share details about it
This is the place to be if you’d like to know more of our defy blockchain crypto nfts icos stos TGs any other three letter ion them ear um if you’re building up your knowledge about this whole Space then this is definitely the session to join we end up talking about
Whatever the audience want to talk about so some weeks we might be talking about metaverse or nfts some weeks we talk about regulation uh cbdcs any other news that’s going on really and we’ll try and include sessions around uh cryptocurrency prices market developments market news anything else so hopefully there’s going to be
Something for everybody in this session so stick around do carry on watching importantly as well do remember to subscribe like make comments on the video even more important come along to a future session details are in the link below anyway with that let’s see who’s
Going to come and join us today hey Hugo hi hi Gary how are you I’m good welcome back thank you but you haven’t got a Santa hat on today I was about to say first things first um the only thing is this is not my actual Santa hat it’s my
Little ones oh brilliant but I manag to get just now and I do have one I just don’t have it with me at the moment fantastic I I don’t I don’t have one at all but you have a red sweater so exactly yeah yeah and I put some red
Lights on in the background as well so that’s great yeah my hat might be falling off I I did get my hat excellent well a festive celebration a happy Christmas a Happy New Year to you yeah same same to everyone so youve been watching what’s been going on in the crypto world this
Week yeah um like uh I’m always on two timelines one is is what’s been going on in terms of uh well especially the markets and Bitcoin going up and everything um and also some of the other things that we discussed last time about um like the account obstruction and things like that
Which I think run in parallel at the end of the day but yeah crypto um basically what I’ve seen is a lot of people happy and um the word is not mocking but actually with but I think the the right term is like without enthusiasm that we
Hadn’t seen in in a long time I in Bitcoin is is about 40,000 and I think it reached 44,000 at some point and so on yeah but again I think that drives enthusiasm for for a lot of other things Beyond Bitcoin I think the thing that worries
Me a little bit at the moment is that it almost feels a little bit like what happened at the end of 2017 which which for those who’ve been into crypto for a while uh may recall that Bitcoin actually made it just before Christmas I think it was to
$69,000 and it almost feels as though we might be about to see a replay of that because everyone who was into that space at the time uh remembers what happened just after that um when it dropped from 69,000 to I think it was about 23,000 or something so anyway we we’ll see hey
Elena’s joined us as well hi Elena he Gary hello people welcome back hello do you do do you do you have a Christmas hat tour today Elena oh my God you dress up like Santa Claus I might have it somewhere somewhere in the house ah no no not not
Not not not to worry it’s just um last week people were asking me if we were going to ha this call or not and I said yes we will do even though it’s um Christmas Eve and in some areas I guess I said yeah but you can dress up if you
Wish so good enough Hugo has got his young child’s Christmas hat on which is fantastic but yeah Hugo coming back to your points about crypto and that kind of thing um I I do find it interesting as you say bitcoin’s gone up it did hit 44 it’s dropped back down to I think
It’s about 436 or something at the moment but we just look at the um where where we’re actually at yeah $ 43,6 39 did Peak up um earlier on today it was like 438 I think a few days ago um it was as you say it was certainly on the region of
44,000 if I remember so yeah I’m I’m just curious because it does just feel as though it might be about to get really exciting particularly with the announcements that are due from the US SEC about the Bitcoin ETFs of which there is several applications that are
In play and the rumor is that we’ll hear an announcement I think the 10th of January seems to be the favorite date people are talking about at the moment but it might be anywhere between the 6th of January and the 16th I think it is so
We we’ll see what happens with that yeah um not just to to um actually that’s also what I’ve what I’ve been reading you know like in terms of the the reasons behind the the current rally and so on actually even The Economist um had an article about that and it they were
Saying of course like several things that are driving this one is that uh several go well let’s let’s call it ACC and governments and so have tried to kill uh some forms of or certain things right and it says but Bitcoin has is still there and it’s precisely because
It was designed to survive um you know in a decentralized ways and so on and the other they were saying of course the ETFs that you’re mentioning um and one thing that again my opinion well it’s actually The Economist opinion I just happen to share it in this case is that
It’s it’s it’s a different type of asset right um and it’s it’s correlated to certain certain stocks more technology stocks in general and so on but not to the overall market so basically that’s that’s one way of for some people that’s enough to say you know what I want to
Have this type of asset which is not as correlated as other assets to to the rest of the assets that I hold so it’s it’s a way of diversifying um so yeah let’s see what happens I’m not in the business of predicting what’s going to happen with
The well stock market or prices or anything um there there’s a part of me that says I heard a phrase that whenever there’s like a new bubble or something people always say this time is different um I don’t think this time is different there’s there’s always something
Different um I don’t think uh you know we can predict what’s going to happen uh but overall I see is what I’m seeing is that there’s more and more and more interest um yeah that’s all I can say how will that play out in terms of price
I have no idea uh but that’s that’s the one thing that I see yeah I think you’re right I I never offer price predictions um generally because I’m usually wrong and so there’s not much value in doing that but certainly if you look at what’s going on you’ve got things like the
Various ETF applications that going on you’ve also got in bitcoin’s case you’ve got Bitcoin harving that’s scheduled for April of 2024 and in the past that has had a impact on prices and I’ll I’ll remain I’ll I’ll hold my hand up now and I will predict that it won’t have as
Much of a impact on prices this time as it has done previously uh and the reason I say that is because once something becomes predictably cyclic in some way then more and more people get into the market earlier and earlier and then they leave it earlier and earlier so it it
Kind of kills off the effectiveness of that so we’ll we’ll see anyway but I just get a feeling that the market has changed I think the crypto Market um the community who are buying crypto now are different to the people who are buying crypto four years ago eight years ago
And so on um because there is more and more institutional money coming into the space there’s more and more traditional investors coming into the space and they behave differently and so I do think it’s going to be so we’ll see but but you’re right every time people always
Say oh this time it’s different except it isn’t so we’ll see anyway L just been joined by Johannes as well hey has well they’re staying on mute for now anyway not apologies sorry I’m in there yeah sorry I was trying to find the unmute button excuse me so um yeah Merry
Christmas all um apologies joining late um was really sad to miss last week’s one as well I somewhat caught up but I haven’t finished all of it yet but um okay well for those who don’t know we do the recordings each week and I I get a
Surprising number of people who speak to me and say oh watch the recordings afterwards you know it’s great to know that because it means not only do we get an interesting session going now but then it also acts as a kind of a a Data Bank a knowledge pool for people to go
Back to so that that that’s fantastic and it’s always good when people say oh yeah I watch the recording or skip through the great thing about the recording is that you can play it back at one and a half times speed or faster which means it doesn’t take it doesn’t
Take as long to watch iter to catch up yeah yeah exactly so so what what’s new then johannis anything happening of interest on your side uh I’m fortunately on no not um yeah there’s just a lot of like personal things been happening um so yeah um I guess it’s never a good time
But um yeah um kind of been planning for this ball run all year and um and i’ I’ve kind of been sideline for many reasons unfortunately so um but yeah I’ve been trying my best to keep up and um yeah I was uh yeah I don’t I don’t
Know what you guys were talking about before and I I kind of like I said I kind of got what was um what you discussed last week but I would like to bring up um deep the Deep In Space I’m I’m uh really getting into that and I’ve
Been following that for the last um year or so anyway and um I was I was wondering how much I guess the community here and and yourself know about deep in and what your thoughts are so what do you mean deep in yeah so deepin is a decentralized physical in instru um physical
Infrastructure um so um one of the prominent ones a couple of years ago uh you may have heard of a project called helium which basically you you buy these hotpots and your idea was to connect um iot Internet of Things um it hasn’t worked out well because primarily
Because they’ve not managed to get uh many clients for it but I I strongly believe um going forward that that will there will be some pickup there but they have pivoted away um to Mobile so that’s gone really really well for them um I don’t think it’s as much of an issue for
Us in the UK because I think our data plans regarding um yeah regarding our mobile phones aren’t um aren’t that expensive but in America I believe it is um and they’ve got a $20 plan where you can use it all all around the country okay and again they they they’ve um
They’ve got people purchasing these hotspots they’ve teamed up with T-Mobile um and wherever there are kind of black spots or where there isn’t coverage um you’ve got the community or um yeah the people’s internet as they as they call it um filling in those gaps um
And um there’s also a project that um I’m I’m very involved well as a as a consumer I guess I’m involved in called um Hive mapper and um they are um basically trying to eat Google Maps um lunch in a sense um and um the and it’s
And that’s gone really really well the price has done really well I don’t like to talk about prices though but the technology is is the cameras are fantastic and um they they also provide um freshness as they call it because obviously Google can only do certain part certain
Roads they can only map them so many times in a year or if it’s in a rural area maybe even once every couple of three years but if you’ve got the community and and I guess this is why we we’re all into crypto and decentralize
All of that and then you’ve got uh I think at the moment there’s 30,000 contributors or mappers um around the world they’ve managed to map uh was it 15% on my might be exaggerating that though 15 I think 5% of the world’s roads um they’ve got 6 million unique
Kilometers um so it’s done really well in under a year and I think it’s and I think Google it took them years to to achieve that and they managed to do that in um in in under a year but that’s the power of the decentralization and and
Getting the community and the people to do that so yeah and I guess because I was I was curious I wasn’t famili with that um but by Hive mapper you mean as in a community of Hive minded people as opposed to Hive the doorbell ring type
Thing yeah okay I was curious for a moment because I know I know there have been projects about linking Hive doorbells together um because if you’ve got all of the intelligence that’s coming out of all the images on the hive doorbells that everybody’s got that produces some quite in interesting data
That you can use so it’s it’s a bit like a few years ago um there was an earthquake uh just outside of San Francisco in California and what usually happens with earthquakes is the US Geological Society goes away looks at all of its um its sensors and everything
And it works out where the epicenter is okay and it usually takes them a few days to work that out whatever and um a company you may have heard of I think it was Fitbit okay so device tracker like like this but I think this might be one
Of them um they actually had to go at figuring out where the epicenter was because they had all the members who’ve got fitbits on who were woken up at a certain time of day uh by the earthquake and they were able to pinpoint by looking at a certain time day which of
Their members were suddenly woken up and they they came out and they said like within a couple of hours we think the epicenter is Sacramento I think it Sacramento anyway and sure enough gical s a few days later came back and said yep you were right so
It shows how these devices whe whether it’s like um a phone ringer or whatever it’s kind of interesting so sorry it’s just with you mentioning H Hive I was just thinking from that context I guess also with what you describing that that’s not too dissimilar to um there is
A project I am a bit more familiar with called World mobile token and and that is really interesting I was just digging digging out the white paper earlier in fact um because that’s looking at some interesting stuff around providing uh telefony and that kind of thing well I’ll just go back to Hive
Mapper I just found the website actually it looked really interesting because it’s showing what the coverages at the moment that’s the one yeah so this looks really interesting that it looks like got fairly good coverage in North America and Europe that’s right and also and parts of Australia yeah and um
Primarily started off in the Philippines as well and yeah it’s primarily um um like major cities that’s how they started out which makes sense obviously um that’s probably where you’re going to have most of the clients as well um and um yeah it’s similar to your what you
Were speaking about in regards to collecting various um data points as well um this would be very useful for like at the moment is primarily just um to to to map the road and to create um um freshness for um for the roads but um you can you can assume in future um
Things like potholes so local councils and all that would um would would see live and um and and see how maybe a particular stretch of road is um uh deter or get worse what I’m trying to say um so yeah so many things that um they can expand on in future at the
Moment um we we can see they’ve got quite a few clients because um they’ve created this things called uh bus so to incentivize people to drive through certain parts so a client may want a a stretch of road uh to be mapped uh maybe daily um and for that reason you’ll have
These like yellow uh Buss show up where they incentivize I guess drivers to um drive those roads to get more honey so the token that they have is um called honey which obviously ties in with the whole of Hive map be behive thing and um yeah so that’s where it’s at the moment
U but yeah that they can expand on it so much more and I know Ryan selis from um misari um has been really really um um talking up as well for the past year they’re really big into the whole kind of D um deep in I think they coined the
Term deep in as well not the greatest probably acronym but I guess it works for now um and um yeah and there’s quite a few institutions into it and it’s all built on well on top of salana as well or they use a salana um protocol in
Regards to that and helium has also migrated uh to to salana so there’s a lot of yeah there’s a lot of deep in stuff happening on salana there um there are also other device so other projects uh such as demo has got a bit of traction so you get like this little
Device that you hook up into your car and then it downloads all these um analytics from your car which you can also use for like insurance purposes Etc so yeah there’s I guess iot in general um it’s really really fascinating and and yeah and especially if they kind of align with the whole
Kind of um crypto eforce of decentralization and obviously like privacy um aspects as well um I’m more for it I think it is great and you you mentioned obviously other projects that that even previous ly so yeah but but I think it’s fasy I keep saying that having been a blockchain kind of
Evangelist and supporter for many years but also an enthusiastic an enthusiastic of emerging Technologies I I think the real power is when you get blockchain as where you store the data AI where you analyze the data and iot where you capture the data I I I see that as a new triangle of
Forces some described it was the the the new holy triactor type thing of iot for cap creating data blockchain for capturing it and and AI for analyzing it I think that that offers some amazing uh possibilities as you as you were describing some of the things there it’s
Interesting as well you were talking about cars I was I was on a meeting earlier on a lot of people don’t realize that most modern cars now have a SIM card in them in in some way in fact the probably even more so actually cars are
A form of iot device so Mercedes and BMW I think it was around about 2000 the year 2000 they they started putting SIM cards into their cars so as you as you say that then means that you can uh capture telematics data about uh where the vehicle’s been how fast it’s gone
How it accelerates decelerates and that there was a growth um certainly in Europe for a while around vehicle telematic insurance so the the companies like insure the box which is where you actually took a a telematic device so it was a a dedicated little unit and you
Installed it in the car and that did all the things that you’re describing of track driver Behavior Black Box I think or is that something different there’s there’s been a few it’s been interesting that um because I I did a little bit of work in this space and it was
Interesting how different countries did or didn’t adopt the technology and it it’s kind of curious that uh in the UK vehicle telematic insurance hasn’t grown at the pace they’re expecting whereas in Italy apparently Italy it really became popular very very quickly and and this is to do with um male egos
Surprisingly because it it turns out that um Italian male drivers love the idea that these devices record their driving behavior because it means they can go see just how good a driver I am yeah so so apparently in in Italy particularly with young males it was
Very very popular whereas in the UK it was less so because typically if you’re using a telematics device it’s because your insurance policy is very expensive and your insurance policy is expensive because you’re a young driver and you drive fast cars or whatever and so it was interesting on that but the the
Whole connection with blockchain um starts getting really interesting because then you can do things like you can have a smart contract that can activate or deactivate the insurance so it’s only active while the vehicle’s moving for example and then as you say you know linking in tokens with that um makes it a
Fascinating proposition so yeah in interesting stuff I’ll look forward to more of this in 2024 as well yeah I’ll um yeah I was actually going to propose to maybe um have what do you call it the the 180 seconds or yeah just yeah so
Yeah um yeah I’ll be I’ll be happy to do that it’s a it’s a it’s a space that’s really fascinated me um and yeah I just I like your um Trifecta um analogy because I think you’re spot on um apart from um stable coins I think we’re
Having and I guess defi to to a certain extent we are having an issue to trying to find like product Market fit in regards to crypto at the moment and and um I just see this as a no-brainer because it’s already kind of happen and
It’s where it surprises me in a way that Iota uh which is a kind of a blockchain type protocol uh which was designed originally for iot devices so Iota you know it um iot analytics and that kind of thing and that was a a blockchain type protocol which was actually
Specifically designed around iot devices if I remember correctly and I’m surpris that that hasn’t grown more rapidly than it has so we’ll see but yeah it’s fascinating yeah they I see I see their logo behind on your um on your board there as well so I’m surprised yeah I’m surprised they
They haven’t done they had a loads of Partnerships I guess the the crypto Partnerships as we’ve um kind of found out mean nothing in in in most cases but yeah I remember in 2017 it’s like Bosch I think Mercedes and all all these companies and I I had high hopes for
That as well but they had a big announcement um I think they’ve moved to Dubai recently or Dubai the Consortium and Country of um given them like 30 million or something like that to build out something there so maybe yeah it’s fascinating stuff and it’s probably another example of how it
Is that these things always take longer than you expect yeah um but but what was I think it was Bill Gates I think who came out with the expression a number of years ago about technology it always takes longer than you expect to get implemented where it then always has a
Bigger impact than you expect as well so I think it’s going to be g game changing so just been joined by JT as well uh Hey JT hi guys Merry Christmas to everyone hey you gonna come on with your Santa hat sorry I thought you gonna I thought
You were gonna come on with your uh your camera with your Santa outfit or something for a moment no I look pretty pretty bad at the moment I had this week um Corona virus so the same one you got yeah so it’s kind of a recovering at the
Moment oh I wish you a speedy recovery that’s good so’s stick to the crypto side then rather than the covid side or they both start with letter C any news or interesting stuff at the moment JC uh not really if you know everything seems everybody seems to be happy with
The current markets you know so everything else looks the same yeah and it’s interesting I think Hugo and I were we’re chatting right at the beginning that you’re right that the market seems quite good at the moment you know bitcoin’s around about 43,600 and has been R Rising quite quite
Nicely you’ve got the SEC uh decision around Bitcoin ETFs during the next few weeks you’ve got the Bitcoin harving in April 2024 everything looks quite good but for some reason I was saying before it feels a little bit like 2017 to me funny enough Christmas time
2017 when you know prices were going up and everyone was happy and that was where Bitcoin hit $699,000 and then fell off a cliff and uh Dro dropped right back for some reason it just feels like there’s going to be an unpleasant surprise like that going to come up so we’ll we’ll see
Anyway 20 the 20 20,000 and 20 and 2017 18 yeah the 20 20,000 was it 20 I’m trying to remember when was it that it hit 69 that uh 2021 uh November 21 oh okay was it round about Christmas time where it dropped away as well yeah and then obviously we
Had the horrible 2022 and and then FTX November 2022 and then yeah now we had this year which is I guess um I think the reason is a because there’s a lot of silly silly silly projects and all kind of meme coins and all that just just
Doing absolutely Cra Crazy numbers and I think that’s why a lot of I guess maybe maturer people and I guess a lot of people are also sidelined as well because we’ve still got the PTSD from like last year in the bare market and um yeah I think that’s probably why there’s
There’s quite a bit of apprehension and it kind of feels a bit too good to be true and everyone’s been waiting for this dip and this has really come yet as well so um so so so you’re absolutely right I just pulled the chart up as we were chatting there and you’re right
2017 round about Christmas time uh Bitcoin hit this new record around about $119,000 I think it may well have just about clipped on 20 as you say and then in the new year it it like dropped Away really significantly went down to about seven so we really had a massive
Pullback and then again um in 2020 we had this point where it absolutely spiked over Christmas time uh and went up from like 26 up to what’s that um can’t even see it because the the thing’s in the way now well certainly it Rose several thousand dollars again
Dropped away and then you’ve got this next big spike um in November December 2021 as you say where that’s where it suddenly really went up to you know $69,000 Ed so there’s definitely something about Bitcoin in particular and crypto Christmases maybe that’s why I feel nervous about it I guess yeah because I
Remember I remember being around obviously in in 2017 and um obviously it was a lot more quieter so um at a time it was like all right um the Chinese New Year and that was going to like pump the pump it into 2018 which didn’t really
Come um and um I guess this is season thing um I guess the Assumption could be you’ve got loads of people meeting in um uh for Thanksgiving so load of families and all that coming together they’ll be talking about that and then yeah and then kind of inspire them to maybe buy
And then obviously the same thing happens over Christmas as well so you got a loot of people like dipping into but who knows I I think you might be right the Christmas effect might be that it’s a lot of very bored people who’ve had a
Little bit too much to drink who go oh this looks like fun you know uh inadvertently put zero too many into the flee submit funds um I go through it from now we we’ll see anyway but interesting stuff we if we’re going to compare we need to compare with previous Cycles
Isn’t it so if you look back four years ago was 2019 yeah that’s where we should compare because the har was 2020 so if you look back at 20 19 Christmas time it was not very good so I think we are in a specific it’s very very different I
Don’t think we we when we look back this was the first we will see this is the first time that uh the Cycles uh kind of don’t match anymore yep uh uh and it’s because of all the craziness around people waiting for the ETF to be approved you know as soon as
Black rocks back in June said they’re going to Lodge well they did Lodge yeah the ETF yeah then of course the markets if you look back was from I think from end of April beginning of May onward start to go crazy you know yeah I think
Right this is what I’ve long held this belief when people talk about uh Bitcoin harving every four years um almost guarantees like a price bump and that kind of thing but I think that the market back in 2017 and 2018 where it was like around about 20,000 and dropped to 7,000 and
The market in 2021 where it you know went went up to $69,000 and I think we are in a different Market I think it’s different people now have moved into it and it’s fascinating as well you look at the data on this chart which is showing
The volumes as well and you can see that you know in 2022 Parts 2023 the volumes shown at the bottom of the chart were growing and GR growing and growing and now we’ve gone back to not far off from the kind of like the volumes of
2020 so it it feels like it’s stabilized and settle down in some way so we we’ll see it’s it’s all guesswork as as someone I’m trying remember the quote someone was using last week where where they said that crypto charting is at horoscopes for men I I think they
Described it as because um we’re looking at these num these candles going up and down and it’s just like predicting a horoscope um it’s it’s just a a lot more men seem to do it than women they women women that give Elena due due credits uh
Tend to be a lot more rational and composed about thinking about these things whereas men go oh isn’t that pretty it’s gone up or down or whatever so we we’ll see where we go in 2024 so any other news from anybody at the moment anyone hearing any other
Things it was interesting thanks you is sharing about um Hive and dpin I think you described it as wasn’t it that’s right yeah dpin Hive mappa and then obviously you’re right Hive is another project as well but Hive mappa um and dpin yeah d n and p i n right another
Acronym for me me to learn for the new year so it’s never it’s never ending in our space it’s just yeah well well this is what happens in any industry that’s Le led by marketing people as opposed to technology people Market marketing people like to come up with new names
All the time so that’s good so elain and just coming back to you for a moment ear on were you about to ask a question when uh we we got onto something else uh yeah but it’s gone away the moment has passed no no it was really interesting to listen to
Johannes and I hope Johannes will be back in the new year with your 180 second speech that would be interesting do do you want to do that now Johannes do do you want to do three minutes on deep in I feel a little bit unprepared um I’m glad there’s interest
In it so I appreciate that Elena as well so but yeah I’ll be more than happy to do it in in a New Year if that’s okay yeah that that would be brilliant definitely welcome that uh well then may can can we return to something that we we speaking
Previously uh and this might seem like a random question uh but there is a reason uh Gary you said that uh the community you were talking about buying crypto and you said that the community now is not the same as it used to be years ago so I I meant to ask straight
Away what’s the community today and what what did it used to be but then uh Johannes appeared now that I we had this delay I had this delay with my question I would also like to add to throw in some more questions um what was the community back
When Bitcoin just appeared what type of people were buying Bitcoin and how has it changed uh up to now also with the price fluctuations does um do the same people buy Bitcoin when it becomes cheaper or are there like different types of people and uh um do do only
Highly do only profession profs by Bitcoin or just or people like like me and does it also if if it is so does it mean that the wide adoption of Bitcoin has finally started thank you yeah on johanah I agree completely as always Elena is the Superstar of asking wonderfully simple but really
Thought-provoking questions so I I’ll I’ll throw in my perspective to begin with sorry I just want to say I have to go so Merry Christmas to everyone okay bye bye J Jay all the best um I’ll throw in a perspective to begin with of what why I think the community is different
And so on how how it’s changed and that’s because when we take a look at crypto ownership it it has grown massively so you think about you know in 2010 how many people had even heard of Bitcoin let alone owned Bitcoin it it was very very few indeed and then from
2010 to 2020 there was a massive growth as the hype built up people became more aware of it but e even in 2020 um I was running presentations and lectures and that where i’ I’d ask the audience okay hold your hand up if you own crypto in some way and back back in
20 2018 I would guess that depending upon which audience I was with 5 to 10% of the audience would would have crypto and and I was quite surprised that that was it was that high at that stage and usually it was um if I was running an
Event where it was like a younger audience so quite often students for example so University students quite a few of those would be into crypto already it’s quite normal to them and in fact if you got them to hold the hands up and you own crypto you know anywhere
Up to half the room that the hand would go up if you then said do you have a pension plan no hands would go up if you said um do you own shares no no hands would go up whereas if you then when I was at um an insurance conference where
Again I asked the same question you know hold your hand up if you own any crypto and in a room full of about I think it was about 3 to 400 people uh only my hand went up so it’s but that’s that’s a more mature older audience over
Time the adoption of Bitcoin ownership has grown and grown so I can’t even remember what the numbers are for the UK now but it might be some like 20% of the UK claims to own Bitcoin or something and if we take a look at the number of wallets that there are uh
Which is kind of a proxy for how many crypto owners there are on that um I don’t have the chart to hand but it’s growing but if you have a look at the the really large Bitcoin holder wallets so this is from August so a few months
Old yeah and there’s these really really big wallets which hardly seem to move anything and like 50,000 Bitcoin in it but that doesn’t go anywhere but then if you move down this list this is what I gets really interesting did you know that one of the the biggest known holders of crypto is
The US government which is mind-blowing the the US Department of Justice so they seize crypto assets and they occasionally sell them off so the the FBI the Department of Justice various others are actually some of the biggest holers of crypto but then you look at the next ones down you
Know grayscale block one micro strategy uh they started purchasing in crypto a few years ago and so now you’ve got institutional grade in investment in there which we didn’t have a few years ago and then you got the Bitcoin Wales you know the winkl Vos twins T Tim Draper Michael Salos the
Former CEO but still chairman at micro strategy you know he he’s got a load of Bitcoin as his micro strategy um and then you look at the distribution of how many people hold I we’re talking about Bitcoin here but it’s kind of Representative of others as well um we
Can see that that there’s very very few large holders but then there’s millions of tiny holders so the reason I’m saying that the Market’s changed is I think over time the big holders are growing that’s kind of developing so I don’t know if anyone got any other
Thoughts um I I would add um and just to complement what you’re saying but I think it’s it’s it’s it’s really interesting and and essentially I agree the the way I look at it and and the framework that I use is the technology adoption life cycle which talks about
The early adopters first and then the early majorities and so on um and I think this is why I was thinking when you were talking about the the volumes and the price of Bitcoin and so on one metric that we’ll probably be looking at is how many people are actually using it
Right or adopting it or buying it uh but then you have This brilliant uh chart with the the number of wallets and so on which is still aoxy um my view again I might be wrong is is yeah I mean in the beginning you use Bitcoin because it’s
Cool right and that’s the the definition of an early adopter you know this technology is cool I might not be able to do something very useful with it but it’s you know it’s decentralized and it’s cool and nobody can take it away it’s it’s a bit philosophical let’s call
It that right um but then yeah the early majority starts becoming more pragmatic and you see there well I I have a use case for this uh I I mentioned for example like using stable coins in in uh certain countries in which the C is not
Very stable that’s a very good use case right or sending money from the US to Mexico remittances things like that and you start getting some of those um but yeah then then it needs to become easier uh and remove a lot of the friction and more useful and I think that’s what you
What the whole point with the um ETFs is basically the way I understand it is a lot of people will be able to invest part of the Pension funds um in Bitcoin without having to go through all the trouble of setting up a wallet and then you know purchasing um doing the whole
Thing through an exchange and so on uh so I think is that the key that’s that’s my view but I think it’s uh I think it’s consistent with what you said the the the really interesting part for me is there’s a Tipping Point somewhere uh at some point and I think it’s somewhere
Between 20 25% in which you’re very very close to that um to that mainstream adoption um I think it varies and and Bitcoin is it’s it’s I think it’s more complex than that but I think there there’s a point in which it becomes um like normal it
Becomes so easy to use and it becomes so normal and you see other people around you getting Bitcoin the example you were you were talking about uh people in Thanksgiving and so on and then it becomes a norm and then it’s a little bit of at some point it becomes like
Fear of missing out uh not not not in terms of price and so on but um what I mean is it does become like the normal thing to do uh and I think that’s what the fdfs are doing I don’t I think we are going to need many more things like
That but I think that would be the path right for it to be something that that a majority of the population would do you m you muted yourself thanks Johan so 2020 doing that um johanes actually you you actually put in the comment Silk Road do you mean
Silk Road the crypto mining company or Silk Road the original dark web thing oh no the dark web yeah when you when you were talking about the Seas a um asset so yeah some yeah primary wasn’t it yeah it’s I’m just quickly looking for some other other charts as well that show um
Crypto ownership and there was a an interesting one that I came across if I can show it here this really surprises me at times when you look at different countries and um just what percentage of their population uh have crypto because you wouldn’t expect the
Top crypto mind you this is back in 2018 ad L uh as turkey or Romania or Poland that kind of thing so I think this is a little bit out of date now but it is interesting you know that even back in 2018 so that’s what five years ago we
Reckon that the UK had about 6% I think it’s double that now um but some of the countries much much higher I I’ll try and find a moreal up today chart than that actually yeah because I think I think in the more recent ones you’ll you’ll see I guess um Nigeria and quite
A few kind of um Latin American countries and um African countries in there as well obviously with um inflation has become a bigger a bigger use case um yeah those those countries and those citizens understand it a lot better than um I guess us us privileged
In in in in in in the west um um and there are a lot more use cases there I think um to another point that Elena Elena made earlier as well is um regarding like holders glass no unfortunately I don’t have um any of the
Charts in front of me glass node have a great uh great charts where they have um how many Bitcoins have been um huddled um and then it’s it’s the whole kind of shrimp or fish shrimp whales Etc and all that so in kind of proportions it’s
Similar to the um chart that you or the numbers that you showed showed earlier and um and yeah I I guess in in simple terms it’s around 80% of Bitcoin um is is being huddled and um that’s another effect as well I guess going forward in regards to the price and obviously the
Scarcity as well yeah it’s a I just trying to look at glasse but um it’s only showing me previews of the paid for Enterprise plan which is a shame I thought there was actually some interesting insights that it had yeah it does get a bit technical but I would Rec
Commend that to I guess anyone or Elena as well um Checkmate U he’s um he does like a weekly um he uploads um on on YouTube every week and um it’s pretty insightful and I I would recommend that even if you’re just kind of like getting started and if you’re genuinely
Interested in in kind of the behaviors and and how bitcoin’s move moving around or not moving U transactions Etc um it’s always very useful yeah and it’s interesting I just P up glass node um just just now to just take a quick look at some of the things they’re saying and
You know it’s is to say you know okay so bitcoin’s up 172% which is interesting but it’s this thing where it says um long-term holders currently hold a near alltime high so that that certainly seems to be the the whole hodler mentality continues to grow or it’s that
More and more people are just forgetting what the um seed phrases are or whatever and they’ve lost their private Keys we don’t always know but I seem to remember it might have been glass node that they used to do a really good thing on the number of inactive uh wallets so
That that was potentially where people have bought something and then they’ve forgotten how to log in or they’ve lost the device or something so yeah interesting so Elena coming back to your original point R um about that the changing Community it’s uh I think it is that the there’s a much wider Community
To to start with it’s now many more millions of people around the world um different countries as well so um I pulled up a chart briefly before which was showing how the Far East um particularly I think it was Vietnam Thailand I I know certainly South Korea
Is really active they’ve been growing in crypto space quite significantly over the last few years and a lot of that is linked in with gaming as well so this is where you keep seeing new offshoots off pure playay cryptocurrencies to things like defy gaming metaverse nfts there’s this whole
Kind of diversity so you can go to nft events where you know people are just into it because of the artwork which is by its very nature a completely different Market to the people who are buying the crypto because they want the price to go up um and it’s
Fascinating on that and the the other area I didn’t mention is around things like real world asset tokenization which I I think almost every week we end up talking about that now that the opportunity to start tokenizing um financial instruments or property ownership or fine art or whatever means
That there’s another Market in crypto adoption that’s growing that’s got nothing to do with the price of the crypto currency but it’s it’s actually how it’s been used so I think there’s loads of stuff going on I think it’s also important um to raise yeah it was it genuinely was fantastic questions
Elena and because I love like looking back at things now especially obviously with hindsight um it’s also important to knowe obviously when Bitcoin started it was meant to be U more of a a payment system um and and then obviously then now it’s become more of a store of value
So that changes behaviors as well um obviously you had things like lightning come about which hasn’t necessarily been successful but that’s also affected um I guess if you had got into Bitcoin 2010 um over the years you’ve seen how it’s progressed and you’ve seen other crypto
Come about and yeah it’s become more of the store of value so you’re not going to necessarily transactive it as it was I guess initially intended it’s not right or wrong um but that also has an effect on behaviors and obviously going forward on the price and how it’s perceived as
Well you you got the other thing as well of changing economic situations and this comes back I think we were talking right at the beginning of this session about the the correlation between crypto prices and other assets so whe whether shes or gold or the S&P 500 and crypto
Uh has got a low degree of correlation in in fact so correlation is effectively if if something goes up in price does the other product go up by a similar price and can it be predictable such that if this goes up then the other thing will always go up in that so that
That means it’s highly correlated um crypto has a low level of correlation with other things so sometimes like gold can go up in price and crypto can go down or shares can go up in price and so to ship uh crypto and then it doesn’t
And so on and some of it links in with what’s known as a fear and greed index which is is really interesting which is to do that there’s actually a product called the VIX Index I think it is which is the uncertainty and and Fear Factor and what you find is that typically
Certain financial instruments when people are fearful go up better than than others so the old thing is like if if people think that world’s about when and there’s going to be economic collapse people tend to buy into gold and precious metals kind of thing when the world’s a little bit safer they buy
Into property and so on and crypto um tends to be a kind of like a a fear type type thing that when there’s a high level of uncertainy in the world crypto tends to do quite well but not always so may maybe we’ve got more fear in the
World at the moment for some strange reason so all sorts of things later yeah I see Okay so we’ve got less than 10 minutes left so I’m I’m going to flip this session around now I’m going to ask everybody because we we’ve had a really interesting 2023 I’m going to ask people
For their predictions for what to watch out for in 2024 so I’m not looking for specific crypto currencies or tokens or whatever General thoughts what what do you think is going to happen in 2024 go hug go you smiling as you were listening to that so I’m I’m going to
Pick on you and ask for your predictions and then I’m going to ask Elena and then your anas yeah there you go um well I’ll propas this by saying I’m I’m an optimist by Nature right um I think we will begin to see more I’m very in line with what we’ve been discussing
Today is I think we’re going to begin to reach to that different Community or different set of uh of users who are going to be more focused on practical use cases or or process and the ux and the way of getting crypto being much much much simpler um so I think it’s
Going to generate much more adoption than the initial use case for crypto which was trading trading and trying to get uh you know um gains gains that you cannot probably get in in the traditional Market anymore um so yeah as always an optimist uh that’s what I
Think will happen like that we are getting close I don’t know if 2024 will be the the Tipping Point but we’re getting closer to that Tipping Point where it will become more normal for people to uh to un crypto in all different form uh but especially with use cases like
The examples that johanes was talking about all the different things that we’ve been saying people investing part of the Pension funds uh real world assets all those things uh we’re getting closer to them and the one thing finally is um I remember there was an interview
With Mark andrion saying um a lot of people say oh this doesn’t work yet and and and there are lot of things that don’t work yet says but for an engineer or technologist they says well that’s just a list of problems that I need to fix right and then you get I’m fixing
Them so that’s my my prediction for 2024 we will see a lot more people talking about crypto actually maybe not even talking about crypto maybe talking about blockchain or even better particular Solutions you know don’t even mention crypto ideally that’s that sounds good Elena go for it because you You’ you’ve built up
An incredible knowledge over the last year I think about this space what what what do you think’s going to happen in 2024 as I have a biased answer as I was studying the I’ve been studying the metaverse over the last months and actually every every session here that I
Missed uh over the last months was due to pending assignments you you understand uh I would say um I would love and I really hope that the adoption of nfts will will start or will continue to go um in nfts in art in real estate in provenance in in any areas because this
Is such a convenient instrument yeah yeah and uh yeah metaverse uh is my is my only one interest over the last time so at some stage I believe we will be meeting in a virtual environment as avatars rather than um in a in a zoom call
Yeah maybe it will happen maybe it won’t but let’s save this session and then rewatch it a year later excellent we can look at this at Christmas 2024 which ones we got right and got wrong so it’s you you’ve got your uh your thought around the metaverse which
I I agree with I think that’s got massive potential Y yannah what what you’re thinking about 2024 yeah I guess um yeah um obviously deep in um um yeah it’s it’s hard it’s hard not to be optimistic in this space um putting aside all all the kind of negative aspects of our industry
There’s so many positive things and um the fact that we’re always just pushing forward always we we’re at the bleeding edge of like Tech and we’ve got so many great great people working on on great stuff um everything that Hugo said and Elena said they they could all have
Their moment next year um or it could be something else or it could be something new that we haven’t come across yet so um yeah it’s just I mean it’s always exciting um but yeah for me I think I see a lot of traction in the in the Deep
In Space the fact that um there is a product market for it and we are starting to align different aspects of crypto as you said with your with your Trifecta or um I just I just see I see that building more and more um of course real world
Real world assets that’s been a big narrative this year um I guess we spoke about it a couple of weeks ago though it’s it’s it’s the possible hurdles in regards to regulation and all kind of great minds like yourself and other people that I’ve heard speak about that
Who are actually a bit more grounded and actually know about the space um I feel like they they might be quite big hurdles to overcome but if I was going to speak positively the the thing that’s going really well in regards to that at
The moment is what um D is doing um and um purchasing um the t- bills and then incorporating that back into the SII and that’s basically um the American government buying um buying our crypto so um so that’s already it’s already proven itself that it can work so um
Hopefully see that space grow um yeah just just hopefully less less less scams and a lot more kind of product Market fit um and yeah things like nfds hopefully we can use nfds for like things like deeds and whatnot and because that’s an actual case there like
There it’s just it’s kind of a low hanging fruit so um so yeah hopefully we move that but I think we’re having a when when the price goes up everyone kind of forgets about that and I I feel like it might be yeah as long as the
Macro kind of holds up the way it is at the moment um I feel like we everyone’s going to be distracted with just the price going up and just trying to make as much money as possible and yeah I’m a bit of a pessimist so yeah I
Can help myself at the end there so that’s right and it’s great to get the the views there as well because I agree with all of them absolutely you know and the thing I always find interesting about the crypto space is that about every 12 months there’s a new cycle of
Something new so you know you go back to the early 2000s that where you had like Bitcoin what was the thing then in 2014 Smart contracts and ethereum then in 2017 2018 icos uh was the next big thing and then you had the defi cycle the nft
Cycle uh real world assets as as you say definitely the thing the the challenge I always find with real world assets is that you’re having to face two different regulatory environments when you’re dealing with real world assets you’re having to deal with the regulatory environment to deal with crypto and the
Regulatory environment that deal with the real world assets and I think that’s why there are problems with that but I I think in some ways that that’s going to be a massive growth area for 2024 and and fully enough I I think real world assets tokenization and as Elena says
The metaverse uh maybe alternative Trifecta of it it’s a way of connecting the physical to the digital world and funny enough as L was saying the idea of meeting with avatars and all this kind of thing is something that I’ve been suggesting for a few years now so we’ll
See where it goes so I I think as always whoever said it originally about technology always takes longer than you expect but has a bigger impact I think we’re going to see more of that in 2024 so we we’ll see anyway folks a really interesting session hope you enjoyed it
As much as I did because it was always good fun I’ll uh thank you for all your contributions and efforts and for those who’ve been on previously as well thanks for coming back been really great have a fantastic Christmas um and we will meet again in the New Year have a great one
Folks bye for now Merry Christmas
