‘FOMO’ is in a phrase book, followed by ‘FOOLS ERRAND’ and ‘FRAUD VICTIM’

December 27, 2023 | by John Mc Keown | 0

There is a lot of talk of ‘Bull Run’, and all the ‘experts’ that lost money in the last so called ‘Crypto Bull Run’ are now all talking up a Bull Run.

This is mostly because they somehow feel by doing a variation of what they did last time… (just dressed up differently), they are somehow entitled to ‘not’ lose money, because of their ‘vast experience’.

But here is the thing… being a veteran going back to war, doesn’t make someone any more invincible, because bombs that drop don’t decide, oh, I must avoid that OG, cos they are a veteran.

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And when you walk into the minefield, the mines have got a whole load smarter. They self re-position on the fly. Yeah, its a minefield… there is a whole new token war out there about to heat up.

So make the same mistakes again, just in different ways if you want. Don’t forget I told you so..

Since I did my explanation of the Handshake Blockchain, it’s ended up getting me back more DM questions than I seem to have answered. So I’m going to start with giving a scalar notion on risk. Then I will state some things in response to those DMs.

Risk is a multi-faceted concept based on 1. Enduring Value Potential, 2. Security from Hackers or Internal Fraud and 3. Threat from regulatory and other sovereign authorities.

I’ve never had a strong dislike for different regulatory authorities and the personalities in them as some people have. The weaknesses centralization brings can happen through ownership as much as it can through architecture design.

So my take is if the US SEC (or other authorities) can, and do take a core service down, then its also prone to hack and fraud, and wasn’t really ‘web 3’ to begin with.

I’m going to try to stay away from brand architectures as examples, because their fans are worse than the followers of flawed politicians. The more flawed they become, the louder the echo chamber of fandom gets. Some figure if they shout loud enough, a bull will keep running long enough for them to recover previous losses.

So what we see, is a spectrum. Risk increases from left to right. When purely speculating, with no real interest in product or long term store of value, then there can be some chance for massive gains at the extreme right end of the spectrum. It is however, also highly risky.

When tokens off ‘last mile’ architectures run several layers deep, the token holder has a cumulative risk based on everything in the ‘supply chain’.

For example, if a hypothetical ‘Parrot Network’ is an EVM compatible off Ethereum, and somebody builds a product architecture off Parrot, named ‘Joey’ and issues a ‘Joey Token’, the ‘Joey’ architecture carries it’s own vulnerabilities, those of Parrot Network, and those of Ethereum. If ‘Parrot’ has cross-chain bridges to other networks, there may be vulnerabilities there as well.

So, every front-end network isn’t in the same boat. Sentiment is a big element for speculators. Some will be tempted to take big risks for short term gains, where there is no enduring value, and try to get out quickly. They don’t care about architecture stability.

Those looking for serious long term value in NFAs (Non Fungible Assets), should probably pay at least as much attention to the tokenization model as they do to the nature of the product, and avoid architectures like ‘Joey’.

So, on Handshake – Unfortunately for me, HNS (The Handshake Coin) is probably going to continue to rise. I’ve a lot invested in (illiquid) ecosystem assets, so not a lot of flexibility to buy coin. The more it rises, the more expensive it will get to work on, building products.

Here are the good things I can say about the coin:

The most enduring store of value in crypto world will be limited supply tokenomics on a Proof of Work blockchain that nobody owns – eg Bitcoin. But this is also what Handshake is.
Even when big business gets into mining, there is still enough small ones to ensure no prejudice against a specific asset holder. Validators (PoS) can be controlled by owners or regulators such as the SEC. Off chain crypto architectures and project tokens – even more risk.
It helps if on top of being a PoW owned by nobody, the blockchain has things actively being built on it. Besides 9ja Cosmos , Handshake has Kyokan, Bob Wallet, Varo, Niami, Namebase, Eskimo Software, Wallet Inc. and others.
Pedigree that stood the test of time – Handshake was built over 2018/19 between people that started up Lightning on Bitcoin, and co-wrote a whitepaper with Vitalik Buterin. It’s recovered to about 3.5x of its all time low in 2.5 months.
Builders are transparent about building on Handshake, even though improvement in Handshake price doesn’t even help them. 9ja Cosmos isn’t the only business willing to speak well of it. On EVM compatible structures, business owners, such as the hypothetical ‘Joey’ only talk about their products and seem reluctant to say anything about their architectural dependencies. This seems indicative of a lack of confidence in their underlying build layers and there’s already been cases of ‘jumping around’ between EVM compatibles and Solana as anchors.
Much has been made of the affordability on EVM Compatibles that will come next month from the implementation of EIP-4844 (Danksharding). The impact will vary from network to network. Some transaction types on some networks are expected to fall to about $0.023. However, HNS would have to rise to about 20 cents for transaction costs to reach even the cheapest of those benefiting from EIP-4844 and that is unlikely to happen before interested builders get their core developments done cheaper. Handshake blockchain is also profoundly more secure than EIP-4844 enabled networks will become.
With ETFs being granted licences, they are likely to suck a lot of liquidity from Bitcoin, and form a cabal to control the Bitcoin market, creating fabricated peaks and troughs, as they are already experienced with equities and commodities. Handshake is the closest alternative by design if this happens, and smaller investors start looking for somewhere else.