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HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS

April 14, 2022

"It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all."

- Thomas Sowell

Whale Reads

Worthy news for aspiring whales

Public Comments on a U.S. CBDC (Federal Reserve): In January, we reported on the Fed's excellent paper titled The U.S. Dollar in the Age of Digital Transformation. Not only is it is a great primer on how the U.S. dollar works, it points the way to a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), with a request for public comments.

Investor takeaway: Reminder that this is your chance to shape the "digital dollar." Read the report, fill out the comment form, and they'll post your comments to the Federal Reserve website!

Your Money is Growing

Truth, in numbers

As we've reported, China is miles ahead of the U.S. in rolling out its own CBDC called the e-CNY. Here's a look at the number of CBDC wallets, as a percentage of the total population of China:

Lots of caveats here: These figures are self-reported by government officials and impossible to verify. It is likely many wallets hold little to no money. Many may be held by foreigners, who opened them during the Beijing Olympics.

Still, it shows that China is getting traction with its CBDC. In comparison, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently said a U.S. CBDC is still years away.

Investor takeaway: An early-mover advantage in technology does not always equal long-term success. However, if China can continue to iterate and improve on its e-CNY, it has the lead in winning the future "digital currency wars."

Block Market Daily

with Mati Greenspan

Hi Everyone,

Yes, those who know me well already understand that at times, I can be a bit of a jerk. However, words like sadist, psychopath, narcissist or Machiavellian have never shown up on my bio...until now.

As you may have seen, a recent study posted on ScienceDirect, which was covered by several news outlets, has discovered that buyers of bitcoin are prone to have dark personalities.

Explaining their research, three co-authors of the study, Di Wang, Brett Martin and Jun Yao, wrote in The Conversation that they "wanted to know about the relationship between the so-called 'dark tetrad' personality traits and attitudes towards cryptocurrency."

"In psychology, the 'dark tetrad' refers to a group of four personality traits. These are Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy (together known as the 'dark triad'), plus sadism," the three co-authors continued.

Dark tetrad traits are "'dark' because of their 'evil' qualities: Extreme selfishness and taking advantage of others without empathy," the article added.

Now, I don't like to bad-mouth people, but the researchers behind this sound very negative. Who are they to classify an entire group of over 100 million people as evil, after conducting a simple survey involving only 566 respondents?

It doesn't even seem like negligence when people with doctorates try to pass off such barbed writing as research. To me, it seems more like intentionally spiteful FUD.

Understanding intentions

This is a topic near to my heart, and just before this infamous paper was published, I was on the phone with members of our editorial team discussing our policy on mind reading.

For example, if we believe we understand the motives of a Federal Reserve policymaker, can we present them as facts?

The answer is ultimately no, but we can state our suspicions, especially since this newsletter isn't presented as news. It's more of an opinion column.

Yet, here is an academic paper attempting to explain why people buy bitcoin and classifying them into just three categories, the first of which goes so far as to suggest that "distrust of government" should fall under the heading of "conspiracy beliefs."

If you ask me, distrusting government is just common sense, since politicians are rarely incentivized to do the right thing.

According to Pew Research Center, I'm not alone, as "Only about one-quarter of Americans say they can trust the government in Washington to do what is right 'just about always' (2%) or 'most of the time' (22%)."

IMG 1 - PNG - f2cb4fe7-4921-d579-4510-010815e47e5b.png

To be totally transparent, I haven't read the full paper in question, as I refuse to actually send my hard earned money to these people, yet the abstract and subsequent press coverage was more than enough for me to put this whole thing in the circular file.

Even more than all the name calling, which hardly seemed constructive, was the second sentence of the abstract, which states that "little research has examined why people want to buy cryptocurrencies." As the head of a crypto research firm, I personally took offense to this statement.

The crypto space has generated significantly visibility over the years, and major financial institutions, government entities and academics have all conducted research on the space.

There is one major takeaway from this so-called research. Even though the FUD may be effective in the short term, the industry just keeps on growing. In the end, the naysayers don't even matter. Let them be bitter while we drink champagne.

Have an awesome day!

Mati Greenspan

Analysis, Advisory, Money Management

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Bitcoin Market Journal is a daily newsletter that makes you a better crypto investor. It is created by Evamarie Augustine, Charles Bovaird, Mati Greenspan, John Hargrave, and Alexandre Lores.

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