“Zero Money”: First Principles Thinking About Monetary Value

8 min readNov 29, 2020

“Zero Money”: First Principles Thinking About Monetary Value

Change the Money, Change the World (23)

Part 6(A) — Appendix: Annotated links on adoption of Bitcoin

Major Private Investment Funds and Individuals

Nov 28, 2020 Guggenheim Fund Files to Be Able to Invest Up to Almost $500M in Bitcoin Through GBTC “The Guggenheim Macro Opportunities Fund may seek investment exposure to bitcoin indirectly through investing up to 10% of its net asset value in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (“GBTC”), a privately offered investment vehicle that invests in bitcoin. To the extent the Fund invests in GBTC, it will do so through the Subsidiary.” Given the fund has net assets of $4.97 billion, according to Fidelity, it means mean the fund can invest up to $497 million in GBTC. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/guggenheim-fund-files-to-be-able-to-invest-up-to-almost-%24500m-in-bitcoin-through-gbtc-2020

Nov 10, 2020 Billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller Owns Bitcoin, Sees Attractive Store of Value That Could Beat Gold “I’m a bit of a dinosaur, but I have warmed up to the fact that bitcoin could be an asset class that has a lot of attraction as a store of value” He elaborated that Bitcoin has “been around for 13 years and with each passing day it picks up more of its stabilization.” https://news.bitcoin.com/stan-druckenmiller-bitcoin/

Nov 10, 2020 Wall Street Legend Bill Miller Reveals ‘Strong’ Bitcoin Recommendation Despite Massive Price Surge Wall Street legend Bill Miller, the founder of investment manager Miller Value Partners, has said he “strongly” recommends bitcoin at current prices — branding it the “single best performing asset class” in the last year, five-year, and 10-year periods https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2020/11/09/wall-street-legend-bill-miller-strongly-recommends-bitcoin/?sh=33c51b865df9

Oct 27, 2020 MicroStrategy Is Looking to Buy More Bitcoin, President Says Michael Saylor bought $250 million in Bitcoin (BTC) on Aug. 11. It purchased an additional $175 million in bitcoin one month after that … the business intelligence firm now holds 38,250 BTC, or 0.182% of bitcoin’s total supply. With the recent rise in BTC’s price, its holdings are now worth $521 million, a 22% premium over the $425 million investment. https://www.coindesk.com/microstrategy-ceo-bitcoin-better-than-antiquated-gold

Oct 23, 2020 Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones Sees Massive Upside in Bitcoin, Like Investing in Apple or Google Early The billionaire investor … back in May … had invested about 2% of his assets in bitcoin. Now, four months later, bitcoin’s price has rallied more than 46% … The billionaire hedge fund manager admitted that he did not appreciate what bitcoin had when he said he invested about 2% in the cryptocurrency back in May “But what I learned was, and what I was so surprised by is that bitcoin has this enormous contingent of really, really smart and sophisticated people who believe in it.” He explained that bitcoin has supporters, crowd-sourced from all over the world, who are “dedicated to seeing bitcoin succeed in it becoming a commonplace store of value, and transactional to boot, at a very basic level.” https://news.bitcoin.com/paul-tudor-jones-bitcoin-apple-google/

Oct 8, 2020 Square Puts 1% of Total Assets in Bitcoin in Surprise $50M Investment “Square believes that cryptocurrency is an instrument of economic empowerment and provides a way for the world to participate in a global monetary system, which aligns with the company’s purpose,” … “We believe that bitcoin has the potential to be a more ubiquitous currency in the future” https://www.coindesk.com/square-buys-50m-in-bitcoin

Jan 16, 2020 A new Bitcoin boom? Grayscale reports record crypto investments for 2019 Digital currency manager Grayscale took in $607 million of investments in 2019, an amount that outstripped its collective inflows of the previous five years … noteworthy given that cryptocurrency prices slumped for much of 2019, and remain far off their highs in late 2017, when Bitcoin touched $20,000. It’s now at around $9,000 … only 14% of inflows in its last quarter went to other types of crypto — primarily Ethereum … it doesn’t offer a crypto ETF, the firm sells shares in a collection of trusts that hold Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies — a legal mechanism that allows institutional investors to gain exposure to crypto. https://fortune.com/2020/01/16/bitcoin-firm-grayscale-reports-record-investments-for-2019/

Nov19, 2019 Mike Novogratz Wants to Bring Bitcoin to the 1% With New Funds Galaxy Digital Holding Ltd. is starting two Bitcoin funds for accredited and institutional investors … requires a $25,000 minimum investment and funds can only be withdrawn quarterly … “You are seeing Bitcoin way outperform other coins right now, and I think that will continue until these coins start to get used for things,” Novogratz said. “You also get more credentialed people … there are probably 20 billionaires I could name that made their money outside of crypto and are in crypto now.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-19/mike-novogratz-wants-to-bring-bitcoin-to-the-1-with-new-funds

Adoption by Financial Services

Oct 26, 2020 For years J.P. Morgan was skeptical of Bitcoin. Now the bank’s analysts say its value could triple, challenging gold Bitcoin is currently trading at around $13,000. That falls well short of its all-time high of nearly $20,000, which occurred during the crypto bubble of late 2017, after which Bitcoin fell to around $3,400 the following year. The current price run-up has been more stable, however, with Bitcoin staying above the $10,000 mark for an unprecedented three-month stretch. https://fortune.com/2020/10/26/jp-morgan-chase-bitcoin-predictions-analyst-jpm-cryptocurrency/

Oct 22, 2020 ‘Bitcoin’s No Longer Optional’ — What Investors Say About Paypal Launching Crypto Services Paypal launching a service that will enable customers to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrencies directly from their Paypal accounts … Users will also be able to pay for goods and services at 26 million stores that accept Paypal as a form of payment with the cryptocurrencies in their Paypal accounts … Virgin Galactic chairman Chamath Palihapitiya tweeted in response to the Paypal news Wednesday: “After Paypal’s news, every major bank is having a meeting about how to support bitcoin” https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-paypal-crypto-services/

Oct 15, 2018 Fidelity Is Launching a Crypto Trading Platform Fidelity is one of the five largest financial services providers in the world … maintaining some $7.2 trillion in client assets … The creation of Fidelity Digital Assets is the first step in a long-term vision to create a full-service enterprise-grade platform for digital assets … a trusted platform provider … a sophisticated level of service … a “scalable infrastructure” that takes advantage of Fidelity’s existing experience in building such platforms … custody Bitcoin, Ethereum and other yet-to-be-named cryptocurrencies at launch. As part of its security system, Fidelity will hold the cryptocurrencies in cold storage https://www.coindesk.com/fidelity-reveals-cryptocurrency-and-digital-asset-trading-platform

Bitcoin Adoption by Country (Citizens investing in Bitcoin)

Sep 9, 2020 Ukraine, Russia, South Africa, Nigeria Among Top Countries by Cryptocurrency Adoption Chainalysis’ 2020 Global Crypto … The goal of this metric is to rank each country by total cryptocurrency activity, but weight the rankings to favor countries where that amount is more significant based on the wealth of the average person and value of money generally within the country … Ukraine ranks first, followed by Russia, Venezuela, China, Kenya, the U.S., South Africa, Nigeria, Colombia, and Vietnam https://news.bitcoin.com/ukraine-russia-south-africa-nigeria-cryptocurrency-adoption/

Apr 20, 2020 Bitcoin Adoption Growing in Argentina, Record Amounts of Fiat Currency Dumped for BTC The Argentine government is about to default on its debt for the ninth time and its fiat currency peso is suffering from inflation. For the past two weeks, Argentines have been dumping record amounts of pesos for bitcoin on the peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange platform …The 3rd largest economy in Latin America has had economic, monetary, and political circumstances that many say are favorable to bitcoin adoption but is still at the 4th spot in volume https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/bitcoin-adoption-growing-in-argentina-record-amounts-of-fiat-currency-dumped-for-btc/

Jul 17, 2019 Zimbabwe’s Deteriorating Economic Situation Sees the Country’s Citizens Seeking Refuge in Bitcoin The deteriorating economic situation in Zimbabwe has seen the country’s citizens seeking refuge in Bitcoin leading them to pay an insane premium on over-the-country crypto … huge price was a result of the locals rushing to offload their US dollar holdings following the reintroduction of the Zim dollar by the government https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/zimbabwes-deteriorating-economic-situation-sees-the-countrys-citizens-seeking-refuge-in-bitcoin/

Sep 29, 2017 As China cracks down, Japan is fast becoming the powerhouse of the bitcoin market A decision by Japanese authorities is helping the country cement its place as a driving force for Bitcoin, at a time when China is turning its back on virtual currencies. Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) officially recognized 11 companies as registered cryptocurrency exchange operators. The registration places several requirements on the companies, such as building a strong computer system and checking the identity of users … https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/29/bitcoin-exchanges-officially-recognized-by-japan.html

Adoption by Central Banks

Oct 29, 2020 Bitcoin Miners in Iran Have a New Buyer: the Central Bank Iran Hit hard by sanctions but brimming with oil and natural gas to supply electricity, turns to cryptocurrency to pay for imports. The first Central Bank in the world to adopt Bitcoin is one some see as bearish because it will excite fear for fiat dominated nation states who may suppressive measures. However, the economic impact of currency collapses in many smaller countries is a fact inviting Bitcoin adoption in desperate need for a functioning store of value. https://decrypt.co/46678/bitcoin-miners-in-iran-have-a-new-buyer-the-central-bank

Who to follow

Everybody has a Twitter account, but many individuals should also be found on Youtube and are publishing on Medium or have written books, and some have podcasts — sort of listed in order of personal attention and you can find many more at my own account https://twitter.com/stefandav

https://twitter.com/michael_saylor Michael Saylor https://twitter.com/Breedlove22 Robert Breedlovehttps://twitter.com/SimonDixonTwitt Simon Dixon https://twitter.com/aantonop Andreas Antonopoulos

https://twitter.com/parkeralewis Parker Lewis https://twitter.com/TuurDemeester Tuur Demeester

https://twitter.com/PrestonPysh Preston Pysh

https://twitter.com/Bquittem Brandon Quittem

https://twitter.com/JeffBooth Jeff Booth

https://twitter.com/saifedean Saifedean Ammous

https://twitter.com/RaoulGMI Raoul Pal

https://twitter.com/PompPodcast Anthony Pompliano

https://twitter.com/realmaxkeiser Max Keiser

https://twitter.com/chamath Chamath Palihapitiya

https://twitter.com/jack Jack Dorsey

https://twitter.com/AleksSvetski Aleks Svetski