Crypto Currency Communities – an Interview
Intro: You are listening to the Crypto Core Podcast, exploring the fascinating world of cryptocurrency with your hosts Blake and Brandon De Shaw. Please visit us as www.cryptocorelabs.com.
Blake: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Crypto Core Podcast with your hosts Blake.
Brandon: And I’m Brandon DeShaw.
Blake: And today, exciting day, we have Sye here.
Sye: How you guys doing?
Blake: So we invited Sye on the chat because he’s been trading in the market and in overall interest in cryptocurrency; introduced Brandon here to Crypto Cousins Podcast. And so yeah we’re excited to have him on as the first interview.
Sye: I really appreciate it. I really appreciate the opportunity. It’s always nice to kind of run into more people that are just talking about crypto, interested in the space, trying to support it. It’s good to have more brains out there.
Blake: So I guess we will begin Sye with what brought you to the initial interest in cryptocurrency?
Sye: Well back in the day, I think that was around 2010, 2011, I was actually looking into the whole dark web stuff. And that’s where I heard about Bitcoin. I thought about it. I almost bought some Bitcoin at that time and I really wish I did, but I let it go. About 8 months ago I started to get a little bit more money to just play with. And I’m like, “What can I do to work with in this space?” And so I started to look into more stuff like Ethereum and Litecoin, and obviously Bitcoin has gained huge traction. And yeah so I just started, got a CoinBase account, and started trading on there; not really trading just buying. And eventually that led into Binance which is a rat hole in itself. You find another 30, 40 different coins that you can work on.
Blake: And Binance is an exchange correct?
Sye: Yeah, Binance is an exchange.
Blake: And so are you able with Binance to put your money from your bank, US dollars, into that and invest in the currencies?
Sye: No. As far as I know there’s no fiat to cryptocurrency on Binance. You have to find an exchange that does fiat to crypto. Normally I’ll use CoinBase. It seems to be that Litecoin and Ethereum are going to be the better options if you want to transfer to Binance, just to due to their faster transactions and lower fees. I would not recommend buying Bitcoin off CoinBase and sort of that Bitcoin to Binance because you’re just going to be paying a heck of a lot until the lightning never kicks.
Blake: So you began with trading. Now have you entered the mining aspect of cryptocurrency?
Sye: I’ve come really close. I’ve just been doing a lot of research. I haven’t got a physical miner myself. The first time I saw a plug and play was with the Crypto Cousins and their Ether miner, which they do a pretty good job in just getting one of those as far as in the space, pretty value-driven miner that you can just it take home and potentially gain some passive revenue and support the space as far as network goes. But what I really like to do is get into building miners and I have been really interested in 12, 13 GPU setups. Those to be seem pretty efficient as far the return rate of those if you can get them. And worse case, you get a nice 12, 13 GPU miner potentially make back part of your investment, and then now you got a nice gaming computer.
Blake: Yeah definitely. We’ve been looking up building a 6 GPU RX580 which is Radeon I believe. And the turn up would be, without power, will be around $5000 with the price of Ethereum, and around a 30 hash rate that you get. So the next question here: do you want to talk about the importance of mining? I mean we’ve kind of explained it on this podcast. But what is your view on what you’re doing with mining and that helps support cryptocurrency?
Sye: So when you’re mining and you’re on the Blockchain you’re helping confirm the transactions that are happening in the Blockchain. You help complete that block and you’re on to the next block. And you get rewarded, the mine you get rewarded with the currency, the coin that you are mining. So you put more in the circulation that way. And that just having more in the circulation that helps increase the total volume and the Metcalfe’s law – more in circulation with more users helps increase the value. But the value is not necessarily what I want. It’s more of just helping the space. It’s the internet of things operate off the Metcalfe’s law on a processing. And so there’s more people that are using it, it becomes a more usable space and more efficiently. So the more people that are on to that, it can just definitely be a productive thing for the entire crypto space.
Blake: So supporting the network itself will allow the network to stay there, become stable, and grow.
Sye: Yeah, ultimately.
Brandon: Yeah. Better transaction rates.
Blake: So I think right before we start this, it’s how difficult researching is, because you fall these rabbit holes. So when you look at exchanges in coins like you mentioned, Ethereum, coins like that, what kind of research and how do you even begin taking those steps to a better understanding in each aspect?
Sye: Well yeah, it’s so hard to stay up to date, especially if you look like on CoinMarketCap, they’re adding hundreds of coins a week. You really got to find a way to decide, “Is this an actual coin or this is just a sh*t coin?” So you look at the team, you look at what they are trying to disrupt. Is this something that is going to be useful? Is it going to be something that has real life utilization to it? And then if you can get on grounds on that page, who the team is. Are they all reputable? Do they have a solid roadmap or they are just in it for the quick buck? You really look for the kind of teams that have a several year plan because you know that they’re not just here because they see, “Oh I can raise so many millions with an ICO.” They’re really trying to change the world for the better. And then read the white papers, follow them on Twitter whoever the page is, Telegram, Discord, those pages normally exist for new spaces as far as crypto coins and Blockchains and networks and stuff like that. And read as much as you can about it. And especially read as much as you can before you decide to throw some money in there, because that can always be a risky play.
Blake: Definitely. Are you part of any discussions or online communities that discuss crypto?
Sye: So I am part of, I’ve been a huge fan of the Crypto Cousins, and listening to them on podcast. I started listening to them on Spotify do a lot of driving with my job. And so I just take that time to get some information. And the great thing about them is they learn just like us. And so going through that process, as listening to them, I join their Facebook page, and I decided that I want a little bit more of a localized group. And so I followed their page, stay in communications and posts, but then I have the local Montana Crypto Cousins page, which has a few members, but it is more geared towards, here’s our thoughts, and get a local think tank, potentially meet up and talk. And then there’s the mastermind group for Bad Crypto. Bad Crypto is another group of guys that are doing a really good job of keeping everybody informed and staying transparent, the rising tide every ship rises, that kind of a process. So pretty much those are my main, and then I go on to Reddit and follow posts on Reddit. It’s actually a great resource of information. You can find that there’s sometimes people just get really emotional and say some things, “The future it’s going to go the moon,” when there’s no real basis of that. And then there’s still the FUD that’s in Reddit where people have baseless assumption that the coin is going to go nowhere. And so you got to try to decipher between that as well.
Brandon: What’s FUD stands for? I see it a lot.
Sye: I think it’s Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. And that’s just people do not necessarily know what’s going on but they don’t have a good feeling about it. And so they voice their not-a-good-feeling, and that turns into a tidal wave of terrible prices for the crypto market. But it’s crypto on discount when that happens and then you just wait for it to rise again.
Blake: And it’s kind of the Wild West that we’re living on.
Sye: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Blake: And so in terms of Crypto Cousins if you look at their podcasts, they always have these affiliate links along with YouTube videos that are describing any portion of crypto, whether it’s building miners. What do you know about affiliate links and how would we use them?
Sye: So I think there’s different types of affiliate links. There’s the affiliate links that are a little bit more of Ponzi scheme-ish. There are certain groups out there that if you use their affiliate link, you will get, based on the people that signed up beneath you, you’ll get a return. Those affiliate links I try to stay away from. It’s more so of verified accounts like CoinBase. Their affiliate link, if you have an account with CoinBase and then you share CoinBase with somebody else, once they spend $100 they will get $10 free of Bitcoin and then you will get $10. It’s just quick and super sustainable, there’s nothing ridiculous about that. And it’s an instant 10% on whoever you recommended. They got an instant 10% on $100 which is huge. And then Binance. Their affiliate link, which I think is pretty interesting, it helps keep a good ecosystem for the Binance token which I’ll talk about in a second. But Binance uses the affiliate link to where anybody that signs up beneath you get a return on their exchange fees. So you actually get a percentage of their exchange fees every time they trade. And then the cool thing about Binance and having the trade network in that ecosystem is that they have their own token, the BNB token, the Binance coin. And what that does is it allows to be 50% lower fees when exchanging. And that can be a win-lose as far as you’re concerned about making commissions, but in the sense of just trading, if you’re going to be a day trader with crypto markets using that Binance token is huge.
Blake: Okay. Now does the token relate back to exactly the coin itself in terms of value?
Sye: What do you mean?
Blake: So if I have a thought, so some coins will produce tokens correct?
Sye: Yes. Usually part of their IPO or something.
Blake: And that kind of credit is used internally then?
Sye: Some of them can use that token. I know there’s one that’s coming out right now where these guys, I forget the name of it but they’re to work on the infrastructure and building of, you guys have probably heard of it listening to Crypto Cousins. And so they’ll actually keep 70% of their tokens in house as far as there are mines, whatever’s mines 70% will go to them so that you can use that for internal investments. Other people don’t really like the idea of holding on to too many of those tokens because then it turns into a little bit more of a centralized system. I know Ripple is one of those that has a lot of their own tokens, their own coins in their supply which makes it a little bit more centralized. They can release or burn depending on how they want to play the market. So I don’t think all of them necessarily work on that basis but some of them do.
Blake: Okay. Okay. Interesting. So in some cases it’s almost like an internal stock.
Sye: Yeah.
Blake: Okay. From Brandon and I, what we’ve been doing with this podcast, what we’re trying to do with Crypto Core business itself. But in just building miners, what else can we do, and trading coins, what else can we do to support the space of crypto?
Sye: I think the best thing you can do to support the space is to one, stay positive, not to spread any FUD. Always try to have an actual information on your foundations, whether it be in argument or in support. I think that’s one thing that’s really important. I think it’s really important to potentially to have as many home miners as possible just to help spread the network. And that could also be just be a win-win – you might make a little money yourself. And then to constantly research and to huddle. I think there are some times where people will try to short the markets and day trading is not the most positive real long term career for crypto. People that are betting against it on futures, that kind of stuff is seemed a negative effect. I think futures have the potential to be a great thing for crypto and it turned out that a lot of people ended up shorting it. We’ll deal with that, those futures have been ended these couple of rounds anyways, so we’ll see how that goes. But mainly huddle coins that you think have a good roadmap. One that I’m super into right now is TRON (TRX). I know I’ve been huddling for a while now some of their tokens, and they hope to disrupt the entertainment space and a couple of other things. But Justin Sun, everybody calls them the next Jack Ma, the Alibaba guy.
Blake: Yeah. Well maybe for another episode we’ll look into, maybe Sye can help us. I was figuring out a few coins to kind of give an overview. I know people know Ethereum, Bitcoin obviously, but some of these new coins, Zcash, are very interesting.
Sye: Zcash is super interesting. I love Zcash.
Blake: In terms of Zcash my understanding, and we don’t want to go too far, is that Zcash is complete privacy. And that’s what kind of offers in terms of other coins that might doing similar things, but Zcash is the first to become completely private on both ends.
Sye: Yeah. People love the privacy aspect, and that’s what has driven Bitcoin to the point where it’s now. It’s helped you to remain pretty anonymous. But it’s not a perfect system, nothing’s a perfect system. So Zcash is just one of those ideas of how can we try to perfect the anonymity of these exchanges, whatever you’re doing. Some people say that if you want to buy monkey’s job, like if you said if you want to buy monkey’s use Minero.
Blake: That was a great interview. The Crypto Cousins interview with McAfee is awesome.
Sye: Yeah. So the Zcash is kind of like falls in that line, and that in definitely having that privacy and that security to it is going to add longevity to the coin. It’s going to be hard to break that one down.
Blake: Yeah. And then Ethereum itself, that’s added on the world of applications. Can you give just a quick overview what you think of applications?
Sye: What do you mean with the applications?
Blake: So I think the application point, see Bitcoin itself, Ethereum kind of allows for then these minor transactions that happen. We are kind of talking about the future, but eventually someday you can drive your car into a garage and that coins will be taking over and the application that’s built upon using that coin. I don’t know if you, I mean it’s kind of hard and it’s still so hypothetical right now, but I don’t know I’ve just, a thought I have set.
Sye: Well I know that people are trying to create technologies on top of Blockchain technology in a sense of its store value and the ability to have easy access and the transparency between it. I don’t know if I know it the car in the garage equation is, but I know people talk about the use of real estate, the use of medical records, the use of all that kind of stuff on the Blockchain network, and a lot of people are using Ethereum. Some people think that Ethereum is the MySpace and Stellar Lumens is the Facebook as far as that technology goes, but I think it’s a fantastic opportunity to put applications out in this meantime using Ethereum and Stellar Lumens. At least for the exchange rate in the efficiency it’s just if Vita can get sharding to happen and the scalability for Ethereum, and I think Ethereum will continue to be used for a lot of these ICOs and these kinds of applications.
Blake: Those applications I guess fall under kind of a contract right?
Sye: Yeah.
Blake: Okay. I mean in terms of the Blockchain technology itself do you have an opinion on that? I guess that you probably support it since we’re here talking about crypto. I think we all find it fascinating.
Sye: Yeah. I mean that’s kind of what I support the most out of everything. I mean Bitcoin being now or the future, any token can be now or the future is relatively, I don’t want to say it, irrelevant to me. But it’s more so that I’m focused on the store of information, the value that the Blockchain technology has. And you guys have talked about it before that nobody has an eraser that they can take to the Blockchain technology. The information is the information, and this is most key, this Blockchain is most key for developing countries because now there’s somebody that they don’t have access to a bank, they don’t have access to what have you. But now they have the Blockchain technology which can allow them to say, “Yeah, this is my property line,” “This is the property that I own,” or, “This is my car’s history,” or, “These are my medical records.” Some people want to get loans, they can use ETHLend or SALT for loans on the Blockchain technology now just without needing banks. So without having that third party I think Blockchain is absolutely the future and it’s going to take over the way everything is operated in the world. If you hear this, if you listen to Crypto Cousins, if you listen to Bad Crypto, it seems to be that’s the way things are going to be going. It’s just hard to say which is going be that torch, which one is going to be the one that carry to victory. Nobody is quite sure yet.
Blake: Yeah. I mean it’s impossible not to believe once you really look at it to see that’s not where the future is going to be. Brandon, do you have any comments?
Brandon: Yeah. So one thing I thought of since we’ve had you here is your day job has you visiting restaurants and bars a lot. And as I think about the adoption of cryptocurrencies to pay for a drink or a sandwich or a coffee, which I think is coming, where it’s early; it’s early, we’ve talked about that it’s early but it is coming. Walk us through the picture how you see that, you’re going to have some restaurant or bar owners who are willing to try new things and put out that they accept cryptocurrency. But let’s walk maybe somebody, big picture, a restaurant, a bar owner, or shop owner through the next few years of adopting, the in-taking or cryptocurrencies as payment.
Sye: So this is really exciting. We are in the early stages, you’re absolutely right. But what’s cool about this is that we actually in Helena, Montana, we have the Lewis & Clark Brewery created the Bitcoin Bitter, which is a beer that they sell and its support is pretty cool. And you can actually buy that Bitcoin Bitter with Bitcoin cash. Why they chose Bitcoin cash over Bitcoin, Ethereum or any other currency? I’m not exactly sure, but the reality is that you can do that. You can go right now to a brewery and buy your beer with cryptocurrency.
Blake: In Montana of all places.
Sye: In Montana right? And so I think that is just fantastic. Of course you got to be in the business, you got to make sure that you’re up to date on how the taxes operate, and that you’re paying attention to; when you sell it to yourself, I mean when somebody buys a beer with the Bitcoin cash, do you instantly sell that Bitcoin cash? Or do you keep it as kind of a reserve just to fund projects that your business is doing? Either way you got to still maintain that for tax purpose with the US government being so stringent as it is. But so I think kind of the process it’s going to be, and I’ve to a few people about it, you’ll come into a couple locations that are fearful of the idea. They still don’t necessarily, well obviously they probably don’t understand the space, they don’t have the trust to know what’s like, “Well how do I know that they actually sent me the money?” Or, “This is a whole other step in the sense of taxes and potential income and I could lose it and it can be another risk.” But those are all things that are going to come in time as far as the securities and the understanding for everybody. And hopefully there’s eventually a consultancy around that can help lead them through the process. But to me, it’s just an easy step of just creating a wallet for that business. That’s their wallet, get them on the exchange, and then find out whatever their address is. And then I think the easiest process of probably just to put a QR code wherever you check out. And then have, I would probably say it would be best to have several currencies, to have like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Lumens, those kinds of tokens up there that you can QR and send to. And then you just want to make sure that you have something that’s following them, so like Blockfolio; it’s a great way to maintain the ins and the outs of your cryptocurrencies so you can submit that to your tax guy and he can take care of all that. A lot faster than using an Excel spreadsheet to track your buys and sells and at what point, because it gets pretty tricky with the taxes. That’s probably the biggest hurdle I see is the taxes for a lot of businesses. But yeah, we got one brewery staring already. Hopefully the next year we lock a few more places down that are at least willing to accept it. It may not be mainstream, but the more places that get it on their store front, that’s just going to be more conversation starters. More people are going to be like, “Oh, I didn’t know about that. I can buy this with cryptocurrency stuff.”
Brandon: Yeah. And really, when you think about it, those types of transactions that are happening every day. That’s going to be when the network really takes off. And when this adoption really takes off is you’re going to have a few risk takers out there, the Lewis & Clark Brewery in Montana is one of them. But you’re going to have some risk takers, they’re going to start accepting it, and then it’s going to spread. Just like when people started getting web pages on the Internet in the late 90s. All of a sudden everything starts spreading at that point and then it catches this critical mass. And so I think for these daring shopkeepers and bar and restaurant owners out there are willing to take a risk are going to do very well and help the overall adoption of it.
Sye: Which is a win-win-win.
Blake: Yeah. And as a customer, I mean once you have the currency itself from exchange out the wallet, all you need to do is just pull up on your phone and just scan. It’s super easy.
Sye: Yeah. It’s a supersede in this process. And even when it comes to the point of, so like let’s say I have Binance on my phone, that’s what I use I have an Android. Let’s say I go to whatever location Lewis & Clark and I don’t carry Bitcoin cash personally, but I wanted to buy a beer. And so I would have to do some quick computations myself which is a side step in the process that will hopefully eventually be worked on. Whether the business is like, we’ll take a daily average of it’s going to be this Bitcoin cash for February 1st 2018 for this week. Because it’s going to be tricky following the ups and downs of the daily market, unless you have a ticker. But let’s say I didn’t have Bitcoin cash, but I wanted to take some of my TRX that I’ve been huddling and then just trade it over. So I sell that to Bitcoin, and then buy Bitcoin cash with the Bitcoin which is a quick process if you sell at market value. And then you go to Sends on the Binance, and they will tell you to either answer the code or to have the QR code. And then you can just take a picture of whatever QR that you are sending it to. And then the transaction should happen depending on what you’re using. Pretty quickly, I know Lumens is almost instant and pretty close to fee-less which is nice.
Blake: And just right there you change three currencies. And once the business owner goes on then they can change it to the fourth, the US dollar.
Sye: Yup. They can sell that Bitcoin Cash back to USD or they could keep that Bitcoin Cash in the wallet hoping that eventually that price will rise. And they, so hypothetically let’s say Bitcoin Cash is under $2000, it’s probably around $1300, $1400 right now. Say they bought a beer for $4.50 and then Bitcoin Cash price surges up to $3000 again, so now that beer’s value went from $4.50 to $9. And so they made double profit on top of just selling the beer, they also made a profit on the coin itself.
Blake: And that’s part of it, for a business owner is that more and more people understand this then they might see the benefits of getting this currency rather than buying into it with the simple beer, whatever it is, and holding onto it.
Sye: Yup.
Brandon: And with more adoption the volatility ultimately drops, because you don’t have the fears and scares of people that sell on just the dropping of a pin.
Sye: And you won’t have the, there’s not much of a market influence by the whales. But there’s definitely some big holders that they hold and decide or like a big, several hundred million dollar sell or buy. And that will create a pretty large candlestick and then that psychologically can reflect on people, but we’re sitting at less than a percent of the world’s population is in this. And so once more people get into it, those whales they won’t have as much a lake to stand on as far as the total share in that pie.
Brandon: Yup. Yup. Very good. How, Sye, can people network with you?
Sye: Well they can, probably the best way would be to find me on the Montana Crypto Cousins Page. Other than that you can email me at syewhite@gmail.com. But I think I prefer it on the Montana Crypto Cousins page, just because it’s best to have everybody involved in that. I want all my friends and other cousins on that page to see the benefits of the communication with everybody that’s trying to talk about it.
Blake: And there’s no excuse for Brandon and I not to be a part of that page.
Sye: Oh no. Absolutely.
Blake: By the end of today we’re signing up for that page. Because it’s saying that thank you for doing that, because creating a community especially in a state of Montana where we’re kind of laid behind sometimes especially in something that is so techy and confusing as that. It’s really important to build that base up and for people who are looking into it to know that they’re not alone and there might be people in their city or the next city over. I think talking about supporting cryptocurrency space.
Brandon: Anything else, Sye, you want to add here at the end of the episode?
Sye: You know, I think we’ve covered pretty much everything. I’ll just look over my… Yeah I think everything is pretty much fine. I would say this that if you’re looking into mining and you kind of do these flat rate calculators. Let’s say I’m going to make, you’ll assume say you take, I don’t know, 30 hashes of Ethereum and now you’re going to be making maybe like that probably increases like $500 or $600 or so. You’re not going to be making that $500, $600 every month just due to the adoption and the competition of miners. It’s said to assume, I know there are two gentlemen, Amir, I’m going to ruin his last name, Kazali and Daniel Edwards of Revlocks. They say that normally every month, you are going to see about 25% to 30% increase in difficulty which mean there is going to be decrease to your net profits. And so you just kind of want to work off your first month, “I’m going to make 100%.” And second month, “I’m going to make 75% of that total.” And then the next month, “I’m going to make another 75% of whatever that was.” And so you may not make your investment back in 6-8 months, it might take closer to a year if you look at it in that regard. And sometimes people can get burnt thinking, “I’m going to spend $12,000, $13,000. I’m going to make that back in 6 months, and I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that.” It might take a little bit longer than you expect. So use that as a general guideline for mining so just you don’t go over your head.
Blake: Yeah. And then once you paid the machine off, then that is just revenue after that if you can get through the first year.
Sye: Just revenue, and then if you decide at that point, “I made my money back. I don’t know how to feel about this space,” you can sell the GPUs back and chances are those still are going to be worth a pretty penny. And like I said, if you want to keep it you’ll have a nice gaming computer too.
Blake: Yeah. And for anyone wanting to sell their used GPUs please contact us at cryptocorelabs@gmail.com. Sye, we want to thank you for coming on today.
Sye: Blake, Brandon, I appreciate you guys for inviting me. This has been fantastic.
Blake: And hopefully maybe down the road we can have on again. Thank you for listening, and this is the Crypto Core Podcast.
Outro: Thank you for listening to the Crypto Core Podcast. Please visit us at www.cryptocorelabs.com or email us suggestions and your feedback at cryptocorelabs@gmail.com.