Marshmallows, Pizza, and Why Vether Won’t Moon in 2020
You’ve probably heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment, but have you ever heard of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment?
Instead of students discovering their dark inner selves running a fake prison, researchers in 1972 offered children a choice between one marshmallow (or a pretzel stick) that they could eat right away or two marshmallows (or two pretzel sticks) if they waited for an unknown period of time.
Fifteen minutes later, the researchers came back and if the child had waited, they gave them twice what they would have had if they had taken their reward from the start.
Years later, the researchers tracked down these children and found that the children who had waited for an extra marshmallow or pretzel stick years ago had better outcomes as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index, and other life measures.
While there were likely other factors in play, it’s often true that those who delay gratification to achieve something greater do better in life.
Before I go further, please note the obvious: any money you put into crypto is a risk. Vether could go to $0 or it can go to something higher. Put money into this at your own risk.
What does this have to do with Vether? Vether’s built for the risk loving man (or woman) who’s willing to wait for bigger rewards.
“But look!” you might say, as some have already said (though in more crass terms), “Vether has only lost value since it started!” While part of the initial price drop was due to the hype cycle you see in many new ERC-20 tokens, this drop in price is also because this is the first Vether Era. Era 1 isn’t meant for moonbois (those looking to make a quick buck). If anything, in this era it’s the anti-moon coin. Let’s see why.
Why Vether isn’t going to moon* in 2020:
The inflation rate of Vether for the first Era (which ends in early January 2021) is 2,048 new Vether per day. In order to keep a $1 value with Ether at a $240 value, you’d need to average 8.53 ETH burned each day. That seems doable with a large enough crowd.
To keep a $10 value per VETH with Ether at a $240 value, you’d need to average 85.3 ETH burned each day. In dollar terms, $10 VETH needs $20,480 worth of Ether burned a day to be sustainable.**
Let’s just say, you probably aren’t going to see $10 Vether in 2020 (If you do… as someone who’s definitely not your financial advisor but as someone doing the math… I’d suggest you sell it right away since it’s very likely overvalued for the near future unless burn rates suggest a similar price point).
Anyone who puts money into Vether during Era 1 (and even Era 2…) needs to have the right expectations. Don’t expect to get rich quick. If you want to do that, go gamble on the latest Uniswap moonshot shilled on Reddit or follow your favorite Twitter personality for their latest 1000X with a Google partnership.
But if you’re someone who values long term rewards over short term (plus willing to take on some risk since who knows what Vether will become), this is the best time to get some Vether.
Take a step back, get some perspective:
On February 21, 2019, Elon Musk tweeted, “Whoever owns the early BTC deserves a Nobel prize in delayed gratification”. He wrote this roughly eleven years into Bitcoin.
Bitcoin started from zero and bounced from less than $0.01 to $0.50 for its first two years. May 22, 2010 is known by some as Bitcoin Pizza Day. On this day, Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 Bitcoin to have two Papa John’s pizzas delivered to him. At that time, 10,000 Bitcoin was worth about $41. Two Papa John’s pizzas were worth about $25. Today, 10,000 Bitcoin is worth roughly $90,000,000 or 47,619,047 bags of Kraft Jet-puffed marshmallows.
Before you jump into thinking Vether is the next Bitcoin, let me tell you that the probability of success may be non-zero, but it’s also low. There are probably many untold stories or stories to come about X crypto coin someone sold for a pizza before X crypto coin dropped to $0. There are always other pizzas and stories out there. Learn about survivor bias. Some people mortgage their homes for a coin and end up with nothing. Know your risk.
At the same time, you have the opportunity to invest in something that is decentralized, fairly distributed and easily accessible, and a unique Store-of-Value on Ethereum. Vether’s max supply is less than 5% that of Bitcoin and halvenings take place ~6x faster. There’s a roadmap to utilize Vether’s features to create an ecosystem with Vether based pools, synths, and stable coins. There’s also a community committed to its success.
At best, you’ll be involved in a future successful, strictly scarce (rare) store of value. At worst, you’ll have funny stories to tell about how you thought you could make money by burning digital money*** (note — it’s only funny if you don’t throw all your money into it. Don’t be a fool. Know your risk and act accordingly).
Want to get some Vether? Load up some Ether, link your wallet and point your dapp explorer to: https://vetherasset.org/
Want to learn more? Come join our Discord channel
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*for those unfamiliar, some people refer to coins shooting up in value as “mooning”.
**in comparison, Era 5, which should start roughly in December 2022 has an inflation rate of 128 Vether/day. With Ether at $240, that’s roughly 5.3 Ether burned a day to sustain a $10/Vether valuation (or $1,280 burned a day). While the value goes up “slowly”, it goes up sustainably based on the burn rate.
***the idea of burning Ether for value is only ridiculous if you think Bitcoin is ridiculous (“burning” up electricity to mine Bitcoin)
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P.S. Why advertise instead of quietly accumulating? I believe Vether is made better (and oddly enough, more valuable) by having a wider, fairer distribution. Join while things are cheap. Cost of entry is low and at worst you threw away a few quarters. This isn’t intended as financial advice, just an opinion.
