Daily Archives: April 14, 2022

Starting from Bitcoin 2022, my motorcycle tour will travel 10,000 highway miles to meet Bitcoiners across the U.S.

To me, Bitcoin represents the opportunity for the common person to take back sovereignty in a time of vanishing freedoms and increasing dependence. However, that understanding took many years of exploring and curiosity to find. I approached Bitcoin from technical and financial perspectives, dug into the history of money, and read bundles of arcane economics papers that all contributed to this idea of Bitcoin and its impact.

Bitcoin grew faster and further than I ever imagined. Given how long it took for it to “click” for me personally, I want to find out what is bringing people to Bitcoin and how this movement is growing organically. In addition, I want to share these stories with you and your friends and family, because I believe these perspectives have the potential to resonate with others earlier in their Bitcoin journey. These stories are best told and heard in person, after a handshake.

How will I hear these stories? By going on tour.

What Is The Bitcoin Tour?

To hear how people are falling down the rabbit hole, I will visit Bitcoin meetups across the U.S. this year, starting from Bitcoin 2022 in Miami. I am riding the ultimate freedom machine — a Harley Davidson motorcycle — to see the country from the ground.

As I visit the many Bitcoin meetups sprouting up across the country, I will hear about and share the myriad ways all of us come to appreciate Bitcoin. My goal is for your friends and family to see these stories and find just one that resonates with them, that shows them how Bitcoin might help solve a problem they care about. Swan Bitcoin will host these stories on its YouTube channel, and I will share them on Twitter.

If you want to share your story, let me know where you attend your local Bitcoin meetup and I will try to make it there. If you organize a regular Bitcoin meetup in your area, definitely direct message me on Twitter. You can see the rough plan for my route around the U.S. in this article below.

Why This Tour Exists

This tour is ostensibly about sharing how people come to find and appreciate Bitcoin — but my motivation runs much deeper. Let me attempt to share why:

Risk makes life interesting.

We marvel at Evel Knievel, revere mountain climbers, follow entrepreneurs in part because all of these people take big risks. They put careers, reputations, limbs and even life on the line to explore the uncharted and make the map for all of us. All of our great stories track the arc of a hero reckoning with obstacles both within and without, not the humdrum of daily life. On some level, we are attracted to and amazed by taking big risks to explore the unknown.

My motivation behind this tour is deeply rooted in an exploration of risk and the unknown. I love riding motorcycles partially because the risk brings a rush that cannot be captured on a page. I want to visit meetups and learn from Bitcoiners because I have truly very little idea of what I will learn or how, but I know I will find a way to hear and share incredible stories. I quit a stable job to go on this tour because I wanted to see what the risk of taking a few months to travel across the U.S. could reveal in my life.

Taking on sponsors for the tour also introduces a risk that I could let those sponsors down. I decided early on to only work with companies that I respect and people who I like. I would rather ride completely on my own dime than sell that freedom to someone I loathe working with. Working with teams I respect, however, pushes this tour to places it would never go if it was just me and a motorcycle. I owe a huge thanks to those sponsors for believing in my tour and this vision: Swan Bitcoin, Bitcoin Magazine, Unchained Capital and Upstream Data.

Risk And Reward

Risk also comes with reward for those who navigate successfully. Facing the unknown and knowing it one step at a time is at the root of why I set out on this Bitcoin Tour. I live for these experiences.

I believe most everyone finds joy in these kinds of experiences, but it is also easy to avoid them altogether. Our societies today — especially in the “developed” world — don’t help. We are driven to work harder and longer for less, then soothe ourselves with menus of on-demand entertainment, food, pre-packaged “experiences” and all other manner of predictable dopamine releases. Risk and exploring the unknown is discouraged from many angles, even though it invigorates us and drives healthy, happy societies. I hope my tour can inspire others to take the risks they’ve been mulling.

Risk And Freedom

Risk also comes hand in hand with freedom. Life is inherently a risky business, requiring personal responsibility to survive and thrive. Throughout history, societies have used controls and regulations to change how their citizens view and interact with risks. However strong the rule of human law, however, we cannot eliminate the risks inherent to natural law. Often when we attempt to eliminate a risk arising from the natural world, we only kick it off into the future.

Risk And Bitcoin

Our current financial and monetary system does not eliminate the risks of a credit-based currency with bailouts and regulations, but instead pushes them off — allowing them to fester and grow. This constant kicking of the can down the road is the “fiat mentality.” Looked at through this lens, other “crypto coins” are simply a continuation of the existing system: a repackaging of fiat mentality in fancy world salads and shiny JPEGs.

The incentives of Bitcoin’s system point to a different era, one where risks and rewards are more evenly distributed to those who choose to take them on. The military aggression, controls and taxation systems are no longer necessary for the purpose of backstopping the legitimacy of currencies, and the great power managing a currency gives a government. Neither will the norm continue to be endless inflation in a time of staggering productivity gains from technology.

It is no surprise that many label Bitcoin as risky, because Bitcoin is changing our relationship to risk. Bitcoin will force an end to a system that incentivizes policy makers and the public to put off and bottle up risks until they explode catastrophically.

In my view, Bitcoiners sharply understand risk and its relationship to freedom, to personal responsibility and to living out a rewarding life. This tour will help me test this idea, to learn more about how those who support Bitcoin understand these relationships and share that knowledge in a relatable way.

The Bitcoin Tour Route

Now that the weighty stuff is over, it’s down to where the rubber meets the road: the route.

After departing from Miami, I plan to ride up and around the U.S. for three months, logging over 10,000 miles in the saddle. The first leg of the trip will cover Texas and the South up to the Eastern Seaboard, and those dates are more or less set. The second leg of the trip will take the tour across the Northeast and through the Midwest, ending up in Colorado in late June. The final leg goes down to the Southwest, then up through the Rockies and along the Pacific coast to end in Los Angeles.

Here’s what this route looks like all mapped out (keep in mind, this is not set in stone):

Participating In The Bitcoin Tour

If you’d like to share your story, join me for a ride or just learn what I’m learning as I cross the U.S., follow me on Twitter @CaptainSiddH and join the tour’s Telegram. If you’d like to support the tour financially, you can donate sats via this Tallycoin fundraiser.

Whoever you are, dear reader, I am psyched to meet you at your local Bitcoin meetup. Keep stacking and I’ll see you soon. You might just snag one of the 21 hats I’ll be giving out at stops along the way.

This is a guest post by Captain Sidd. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

Announced in a blog post published on Tuesday, April 12, the Belarusian crypto exchange Currency.com says it will restrict its services for Russian users following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine brought violence and disorder to the people of Ukraine. We condemn the Russian aggression in the strongest possible terms. We stand with Ukraine and everyone who denounces this terrible war. In these circumstances, we can no longer continue to serve our clients from Russia,” the post from Currency.com reads. 

📢 halts operations for residents of the Russian Federation (Russia). Clients from other countries and regions will not be impacted by this decision.

Learn more: pic.twitter.com/uhsQJvgp6O

— Currency.com (@CurrencyCom) April 12, 2022

As reported by Market Insider, Currency.com was established and registered in the Belarusian capital Minsk in 2018, and it is primarily focused on serving the Eastern European markets. Since then, though, the company has moved its headquarters to Gibraltar, but it still has an office in Minsk, as well as in Warsaw, Poland, and in New York in the U.S.

Many accuse Belarus of helping Russia

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, most nations around the globe have imposed strict sanctions on Russia, as well as on Belarus. In the Russian case, even assets belonging to the Russian central bank have been frozen or confiscated. The two neighboring countries are close allies, as are their leaders, and many accuse Belarus of helping Russia by allowing them to use Belarusian territory to attack Ukraine.

Until now, most crypto exchanges have been anything but keen to ban Russian users as long as they are private individuals. U.S. authorities have warned crypto firms against helping Russia as a country and those individuals under sanctions.

As reported by CryptoSlate, anyone who seeks to help Russia bypass economic sanctions will be held accountable by the US government, said Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo.

Clear message to crypto exchanges

“What we want to make very clear to crypto exchanges, to financial institutions, to individuals, to anyone who may be in a position to help Russia take advantage and evade our sanctions: We will hold you accountable,” Adeyemo said.

However, sanctions do not apply to ordinary Russians not listed on any sanctions lists. Some Russians are using crypto as a lifeline as the ruble has collapsed and millions of people have lost their life savings.

“Some ordinary Russians are using crypto as a lifeline now that their currency has collapsed. Many of them likely oppose what their country is doing, and a ban would hurt them, too,” Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong said in a series of tweets last month. This stance has also been repeated by Kraken’s CEO Jesse Powell and Binance’s Changpeng Zhao, two of the other major crypto exchanges.

Western leaders have increasingly focused on the use of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) to evade sanctions, however, this fear has also been refuted by several analysts and observers, not the least by an extensive report by Chainalysis.

On April 8th, the ground began to shake: CoinStats was hit by The ⚡Big ⚡Big Spark, a live event introducing an avalanche of revolutionary updates that are about to change your trading experience forever. The CoinStats team members walking you through the new features enjoyed the enthusiasm with which our community welcomed the updates. 

We would like to thank you guys for turning up, asking thoughtful questions, and of course, cheering us on. That being said, you have seen nothing yet: The 100 exclusive NFTs sent to our users opened a new era of amazing rewards and massive rehauls. 

Now let’s go over the key updates revealed at The ⚡Big ⚡Big Spark. 

CoinStats Rewards

Since CoinStats is evolving at a high pace, sometimes the members of our community miss out on useful features and communication channels. The launch of CoinStats Rewards means you’ll get rewards for discovering CoinStats in its full glory. 

How does it work? You complete quests listed in our CoinStats Rewards program. It can be anything: Swapping via our DeFi Wallet, referring a friend, visiting CoinStats every day or joining our Discord channel. The completion of quests will earn you ⚡Sparks that you can later exchange for a myriad of terrific rewards. For example, you may choose CoinStats Premium, a CoinTickr tracking device or a custom NFT. So you get rewarded for exploring CoinStats – it’s a win-win in our book!

Homepage Overhaul

The ⚡Big ⚡Big Spark also transformed our homepage! From now on, you can find all your favorite coins and major crypto news right on the CoinStats homepage. You never know, maybe your next big investment will come from just opening CoinStats.

CoinStats Stories

Next up we have the launch of CoinStats Stories. Who doesn’t love a Pepe meme or an informative news article about the latest hype? Now you’ll have daily news, crypto memes, and so much more right at your fingertips. 

Swapping 2.0

And finally, The ⚡Big ⚡Big Spark brought us Swapping 2.0: Now you can trade on CoinStats with zero extra fees right where you do your research. Enjoy a smooth and convenient user experience as you trade and invest into the coins that will take you there.

So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and try out all these exciting changes that The ⚡Big ⚡Big Spark brought about. And make sure to tune in next time we’re hit with something equally transformative, word on the street is it’s coming very soon.

Airline miles are the original altcoin, allowing zombie companies to issue value for nothing while encouraging people to be “Miles Chasers.”

In 1999, a civil engineer by the name of David Phillips managed to earn 1.2 million miles by taking advantage of a promotion by Healthy Choice. He did this by mailing in UPC labels from their pudding cups and henceforth became known as The Pudding Guy. This became an early internet meme, like “All your base are belong to us” and the Hampster Dance.

Airline miles have a weird place in American culture. Everyone knows their uses are very limited, they have no transferability and oftentimes expire. Yet they’re seen as a way to beat the system, of getting something for free, of saving some money. We look at The Pudding Guy with envy and admiration. Here’s someone who found a loophole in the system and used it for air travel! He bent the system to his will, and got the benefits that only rich people are entitled to!

There are now many websites and forums that discuss how you can get deals on miles and get hacks on travel. These people are called Miles Chasers and they accumulate miles on the cheap. They apply for several credit cards, spend time on surveys to earn miles and spend weeks traveling to get to the next status tier. They don’t realize that they’ve bought themselves a job, not even a particularly interesting one at that, and it’s entirely rent-seeking.

Confessions of a Miles Chaser

I used to be one of those Miles Chasers. I’d spend an hour looking for a way to earn miles so I could get the equivalent of $8 in miles. Somehow, it never registered that I was giving myself a job at $8/hr. The sadder thing is that the work didn’t really benefit anybody or build anything. It was as productive as doomscrolling through Facebook. Unfortunately, Miles Chasing is a hard habit to break because of the scarcity mentality that’s so common to fiat money: You can take the miles from my cold, dead hands.

Miles have the illusion that you can get something for nothing. I wanted to beat the system and bend it to my will, like The Pudding Guy did. I signed up for lots of credit cards, got their miles and kept track of the required spending for the sign-up bonus for both me and my wife. Only later did I understand that I was rent-seeking.

How Miles Work

Miles look like a normal loyalty program, much like getting a sixth sub free at Subway if you purchase five. And indeed, that’s how it all started back in 1981 when both American and United started their mileage loyalty programs. Both airlines saw that business travel was their big profit center and by rewarding their customers, they could get some more of that business travel money. These customers weren’t as price sensitive to the flights since the companies would foot the bill, but they did care about the benefit: the airline miles. Miles are a subtle kickback to the flyers who were traveling on the company dime.

Soon, other airlines and hotels and car rental companies followed suit. They, too, had a lot of business travelers, and they wanted to incentivize business travelers with company funds to purchase from them. Of course, it sucks having lots of different loyalty programs to manage, so many of the hotels and car rental companies partnered with existing airline miles programs. Miles became the default kickback currency to traveling employees everywhere.

Airlines sell miles to partners at around $0.01/mile. What started as a way for loyalty programs to consolidate became a huge revenue source for airlines. Not only do hotels and car rental companies buy them, but also credit card companies, survey firms and even consumers. Credit cards, in particular, have become huge buyers of miles, as they use their 3% merchant fees to fund the kickback to the user.

Miles are a form of debt; they are redeemable for future flights. Airlines can bank revenue now for flights that haven’t occurred yet! Unlike normal debt, however, miles can be debased by repricing redemptions, reducing redemption availability or expiring them after a period of time.

The availability of this special form of debt, as we will see, has fundamentally changed the nature of the businesses, from travel to debt issuance. It turns out that the ability to print your own debt is a curse.

Airlines are Difficult Businesses

Airlines are very difficult to run. They require tremendous amounts of capital expenditures, high ongoing costs like fuel and labor and complicated logistical infrastructures. There’s also regulation, competition and weather to deal with. It’s no surprise, then, that they often get into financial trouble.

Because governments view airlines as a display of national prestige, there’s a tendency to bail them out of their troubles. The three major U.S. airlines (Delta, American and United) have gone through at least one bankruptcy in the last 20 years. The bankruptcy proceedings usually result in a merger or some new company that’s injected with government funds. Even airlines that might go bankrupt are bailed out by the government such as during the travel shutdowns of the pandemic. The result is that airlines are now zombie companies that repeatedly get revived through government intervention.

Zombie companies typically don’t do that well in the marketplace. It’s no coincidence that air travel times are slower now than in the ‘70s. Planes might be more fuel efficient, but they’re not really faster or more convenient. The way these zombies have survived, besides government intervention, is through the financialization of their miles programs.

Whenever airlines are in a pinch, they sell miles to their partners for cash. They are acting as central banks, except instead of dollars they issue new miles. What’s more, they also control the redemption side of the equation. If they want less redemptions they’ll put more restrictions on redemption flights and if they want more, they’ll put less restrictions. Depending on the inventory of seats they have and the cost of certain flights, they can optimize for discharging the outstanding miles whenever it is least costly. They’re the neighbor that borrows your snowblower in October and returns it in May.

Miles are debt on an airline balance sheet, with a particular form of redemption that airlines control. The initial issuance of the miles and control of the redemption process makes them very much like an altcoin. Altcoins are created at no cost and can only be redeemed for a particular purpose. ICOs were predicated on this, for example. Coin X entitled you to some service, which may or may not be available depending on what the central committee decided.

Mileage Program Valuation

The complete control of the creation and redemption processes makes airline miles programs very valuable. During the pandemic, we got a glance at their valuations because these airlines took out loans against their miles programs. MilesPlus, United Airlines’ program, was valued at $22 billion in 2020. This is in contrast to their current market cap, which is $15B. United Airlines wholly owns MilesPlus, so it’s like finding out that a house costing $500,000 has a kitchen worth $800,000. The rest of United Airlines is worth -$7 billion! Meaning that United is more a bank that uses flights to discharge accumulated mileage debt than an airline that uses mileage programs for loyalty.

The other two major carriers in the U.S., American and Delta, have similar valuations on their miles programs.

These companies are zombies, only kept alive by their ability to print new miles and borrow against future revenue. They’ve become financialized to the point that their business model is mostly in selling miles. They are the original altcoins.

Zombies Everywhere

Airlines are surviving on borrowed revenue. They don’t really operate air travel at a profit, but instead use air travel to discharge miles that they print. By selling miles, they’re banking revenue now for a redeemable liability later. The air travel part of their business is a loss-leader and the part that’s only necessary because it’s the main way in which miles get redeemed. The airlines are zombies living on borrowed time.

The perception of miles is that people are getting something for nothing. In reality, Miles programs are rent-seeking jobs in a money-printing system. The Cantillionaires of airline miles are the people with premium status, who get benefits that cost more for other people. The cost of airline seats are higher because of the subsidies paid to the high-status people. The people are zombies that go after miles.

All this is to say that altcoins aren’t really new. The main difference between altcoins and airline miles is that airlines have been forced to keep a useful service around, which altcoins don’t. In a sense, altcoins are a new level of zombification, with no useful redemption mechanism. If airlines someday only operated the miles programs, they would be altcoins.

Altcoin users, then, are the equivalent of Miles Chasers. They’ve bought themselves jobs of finding the best deals. They buy random coins not based on utility but based on discount. A life seeking deals like this is a good way to end up with a lot of flea-market junk, which not coincidentally is what their portfolios look like.

And that’s the real trouble. It’s easy to get caught up in the lifestyle and fritter your life away on a rent-seeking activity. The Pudding Guy has probably devoted 10,000+ hours to Miles Chasing and altcoiners have probably spent similar amounts of time looking for coin bargains. Such devotion to “free” stuff would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Plebs stack sats and buy bitcoin by working on what they’re good at, that the market wants. Altcoiners are like The Pudding Guy, rent-seeking and selling their souls in jobs they bought for themselves.

We are not the same.

This is a guest post by Jimmy Song. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has been granted Montenegrin citizenship. Buterin joins other members of the crypto community with global experience who have been invited to help the small Southeast European nation attract investments and develop its blockchain sector.

Vitalik Buterin Obtains Montenegrin Passport

Prominent crypto figure Vitalik Buterin is now a citizen of Montenegro, the country’s public service broadcaster revealed this week. Radio Televizija Crne Gore (RTCG) quoted an official announcement from the Ministry of Finance and Social Welfare in Podgorica.

According to the report, the Russian-born Canadian programmer and blockchain specialist acquired his new Montenegrin passport at the suggestion of Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapić and the Minister of Finance Milojko Spajić. A statement from his department noted:

Minister of the Interior Sergej Sekulović, recognizing the importance of this initiative, made the decision to admit Vitalik Buterin to Montenegrin citizenship at the proposal of the prime minister, and today he was handed a Montenegrin passport.

The finance ministry pointed out that a group of global crypto experts have visited Montenegro at the invitation of Minister Spajić. Montenegrin authorities believe the cooperation with them will contribute to developing the country’s economy, attracting investments and creating new, high-paying jobs in this particular field.

In comments made after a recent panel called “Future Now! A new era of Montenegrin finances,” Buterin stated that Montenegro must have a good legislative basis as well as the necessary capacity to educate the young generations so that its citizens can benefit from the technologies associated with digital assets.

The co-founder of Ethereum, one of the best-known representatives of the crypto space, is expected to support the further promotion of Montenegro and the overall development of the blockchain industry in the small Balkan nation. The country is currently working on a comprehensive legislative framework that would enable the best use of crypto technology and spur growth in the sector.

Do you think Montenegro will try to become a crypto hotspot in Southeast Europe? Let us know in the comments section below.

Lubomir Tassev

Lubomir Tassev is a journalist from tech-savvy Eastern Europe who likes Hitchens’s quote: “Being a writer is what I am, rather than what I do.” Besides crypto, blockchain and fintech, international politics and economics are two other sources of inspiration.