I’m back with my crypto guy, Banyan Hill’s Ian King, and today is all about the technology behind cryptocurrencies.
Maybe you’ve come across the term “Web3,” or you want to know more about the potential of decentralized tech.
Ian’s got you covered!
This is Part 5 of my crypto series with Ian. Follow these links to get caught up: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.
Build a New Internet
Ian: There’s a company right now called HoloPort that’s shipping these devices that you connect to the network, and people will store files on your decentralized cloud instead of having one big database somewhere run by Amazon, Google or Microsoft.
Every computer in America will have idle storage space that other people can store files on. That’s another big idea.
That’s why I think that owning Ethereum, and other protocols that allow for smart contracts, is actually owning the internet. In the next 10 years, we’re going to see more people who have idle digital resources to offer. That could be cloud storage or network bandwidth with protocols like Helium.
And speaking of Helium … It’s just an incredible experiment that happened. Helium basically bootstrapped the largest telecom network in the world in a couple of years by incentivizing people to build out the infrastructure.
Think about how AT&T and Verizon have to build out their 5G. They have to invest in 5G towers. What Helium did is they basically said: “If you provide network coverage around your given location, we’re going to pay you in Helium tokens. Any investor that wants to invest in part of the network can just buy the token and push the token price up.”
Helium is looking at a $3 billion network that was just bootstrapped from cash.
That is an idea, a way that you can build a brand-new technology from the ground up with users and not a centralized organization. I think we’re going to see more of that.
We’ll see more of that on the digital side, with cloud storage and other technologies.
Web3 and Decentralized Internet
Adam: The Helium story is fascinating to me because you had mentioned AT&T and Verizon. These are capital-intensive businesses that have to run those lines and build those towers. That’s basically why they’re more or less a monopoly or an oligopoly.
It’s so crazy that a small, bootstrap crypto setup could grow to the size it is.
Basically, what you’re telling me is that this Web3 revolution is the little guy’s chance to own a piece of what will become the next internet. It’s still in its infancy, right?
Ian: Absolutely.
Web3 is a catch-all term. The idea is that somebody who creates digital value will be compensated for that digital value.
That could be anything from providing a digital resource, to someone who’s creating music and wants to share that with their fans. They don’t need a platform like Spotify or Apple Music in between them and their fans.
A lot of people are happy about this because there won’t be that kind of censorship by Big Tech along the way. Maybe you agree with it or not. Maybe you just don’t listen to the music or the person that’s putting out the content.
But I’m excited that we are using the internet as a utility, rather than having some big corporate oligopoly run it themselves.
And I’m not saying government utility. Web3 is a utility that’s going to be owned by the people. I just think that this decade’s going to bring up so much innovation that we haven’t seen before.
Adam: It’s truly fascinating. I think the opportunity from an investor standpoint is phenomenal.
I hope you are starting to see the true potential of decentralized tech and cryptos. I’ll wrap things up with Ian next week.
We’ve covered a lot over the last few weeks, but we barely skimmed the surface of Ian’s crypto knowledge.
He’s been tracking and investing in this up-and-coming asset class for years now.
And he’s found his latest “buy alert” within the crypto space.
He calls it “the greatest investment in history.”
To good profits,
Adam O’Dell
Chief Investment Strategist