How To Survive Thanksgiving When You Work In Crypto
It’s that time of year! Most Americans will be celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, and feasting on turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes and expressing thanks for the good things in life.
If you work in crypto, don’t fear (unless your in-law is Nouriel Roubini). Totle is here to help keep you in the clear! While we can’t prepare you for any discussion of politics, we can help you brainstorm likely questions or comments from unassuming friends or family and craft civil answers. Stress-test your patience now, yeah?
First, let’s assume there is no hostility against blockchain or crypto, but raging misunderstanding and lack of education. Coming back from Devcon, where you had the ability to discuss (insert some complex topic here) with Vitalik and Vlad, answering “What the heck is Bitcoin even?”, will stretch you.
Let’s get to it!
Question: “Your shirt is spelled wrong.”
Answer: “Take it up with GameKyuubi.”
— —
Question: “I hear cryptocurrency mining is going to push us over the edge of global warming.”
Answer: “You are both wrong and right. Right in that sense that cryptocurrency mining uses a lot of energy, but you know what else does? The turkey on your plate, plane ride here, and hundreds of thousands of bank branches, ATMs, and everything else it takes to operate the traditional banking industry! You are wrong in the sense that the majority of blockchains are either being developed with, or converting to, a different, less energy-consuming process to produce tokens. Ethereum, the second largest blockchain, has plans to implement this in the near future.”
— —
Question: “Isn’t cryptocurrency used for the black market? Tax-evaders? Drug lords?”
Answer: “I hate to break it to you, but did you know that as of 2017 the world’s biggest banks had been fined $321 billion since the 2008 financial crisis? That’s for everything from money laundering to discrimination to providing misleading information and more. Blockchain is an amazing solution for this because it transparently records every single transaction to ever take place. It’s a completely open ledger that anyone can read at any point in time. Imagine the honesty and traceability in that!”
— —
Question: “Can you help me buy some cryptocurrency?”
Answer: “My rate is (do some math) per hour.”
Just kidding!
Real Answer: “My rate is (do some math) per hour, minus a friends/family discount.”
KIDDING again! We actually think it’s amazing to help newbies get into the crypto space, and what better way to do so then buying a bit of cryptocurrency? If you have the time, show them how to set up a MetaMask wallet (or give them one of the hundreds of free hardware wallets you’ve picked up at conferences this year), stress the importance of private key security, and buy some ETH at a fiat on-ramp. Or if you’re particularly nice, send them $15 worth yourself.
Voila! They are on the crypto train.
— —
Question: “But it’s backed by nothing. It’s not real money.”
Answer: “Without getting too philosophical about what really perceives value, let me explain. Those dollars in your wallet are backed by trust in a centralized government that is $21.6 trillion dollars in debt. The ETH in my hardware wallet are backed by a hard cap on supply, a complex verification algorithm, decentralized network, and innovative industry. So, what is real money to you?”
— —
Question: “Crypto was and still is a bubble.”
Answer: “Let’s take a look at the market sizes of various financial assets compared to the crypto market to get a better perspective of the said ‘crypto bubble’:
The crypto market as of July 2018 was merely 0.05% the size of the derivatives market. Derivatives are financial instruments that are essentially ‘bets’ against an underlying assets performance.
The market cap of the crypto market at its peak was just over $830 billion. As of today, that number is at about $165 billion — a difference of $665 billion. Let’s not forget about the $10.2 trillion losses in shareholder value in 2008 alone during the global financial crisis — $6.6 trillion of which came from the stock market.
In other words, the crypto market losses since its peak are about 1000 times less than those of the 2008 stock market crash.
Cryptoassets are still in a very early stage of development, and as such, the market cap is still very small. We see blockchain applications benefiting almost all of the markets above in the future. If that assumption turns out to be true, which many of us well-educated strongly believe, then which of these look like bubbles to you?”
— —
Question: “Do you think it’s time to get a job at a real company and stop playing with fake money?”
Answer: “Upwork saw a 6,000% year-over-year growth in demand for blockchain skills. It is the #1 in-demand skill on their website. If you search ‘blockchain’ on LinkedIn, it returns 9,577 jobs. A Global Market Insights report says that the blockchain market is set to exceed $16 billion USD by 2024. I feel very comfortable with where I’m at.”
In full disclosure, we are having a bit a fun here. You should answer any crypto and blockchain related questions in the best way you see fit. If you do get questions, take it as a great educational opportunity to spread trustworthy and sound knowledge on what our industry is doing.
Happy Thanksgiving!
P.S. Comment below with the most crazy/funny/difficult question you’ve ever been asked by your friends and family about crypto!
Have a question? Want to learn more about Totle? Check out the links below.
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/totle
Telegram: http://t.me/totleinc
Medium: https://medium.com/totle
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/totlecrypto
Twitter: https://twitter.com/totlecrypto
Help: hello@totle.com.
