Arry's Airdrop #11: USA Loves Bitcoin Mining and $BTFD 🇺🇸
​The news in "Uptober" continues on and we're just getting past the halfway point this month. All eyes are of course on $BTFD (The new Bitcoin Futures ETF that was just approved by the SEC) - which is literally launching Tuesday, October 19th (the day you're reading this newsletter). Also, note, the ETF stock ticker symbol being "BTFD" cannot be anymore (hilariously) on point with the culture of the crypto-excited world. 

Expect all kinds of hype, positive energy, volatility (up and down) and more of this "Uptober" momentum to continue on. I'm bracing myself already. This is exciting and all - but let's take a big step back and look at reality.

This evening, I had the privilege of being a guest speaker to Professor William Covington's Technology Law and Public Policy Clinic (University of Washington). At the end, Professor asked me what message I wanted to leave the students with as we wrapped up the class. I'd like to share the same messages with all of you that have joined me on this journey along the way - whether it was in one of the various meetup groups, the podcast, working shoulder-to-shoulder with the Cascadia Blockchain Council, or in one of my courses I teach:

• The time is now to educate and invest in yourself. Build up your financial literacy about investing, our fiscal and monetary policies. Engage in civil discourse with friends and colleagues. One great thing about the blockchain/crypto community is actually all of the public discourse (not always "civil") - the fact that it happens at all is a blessing that we should not take for granted. 
• Activate and get to know your policy makers who represent YOU. We cannot afford to be complacent any more. Make sure the policy makers really represent YOU. Shoot them an email. Leave them a voicemail. Get attuned to our legislative processes. Get involved.  
  • Did you know the average age of a US Senator is ~64.3 years old? It's the oldest U.S. Senate in American history.
  • Did you know the average age of a U.S. Representative is ~57. Democratic leaders in the House are actually on average two decades older than Republican counterparts.
  • Did you know the two eldest members of Congress are 87 years old? ... 
• Raise the bar. Just looking at the age concerns, it's no wonder that there are serious generational concerns looking at the lawmakers across the country. Many of our policy makers are not tech-savvy (not even close), yet our future requires folks be. Ask that our policy makers and their staff put in the right kind of work and actively seek the appropriate education from technologists to get up-to-speed, ASAFP. All of our futures depends on this. We cannot afford to have more folks in power representing us saying ignorant blanket statements like crypto is only for "shadowy super coders" and money laundering. That kind of ignorance is unacceptable, now, more than ever.

Thank you to everyone for reading and engaging. I know we're all so busy and have so many other (maybe more fun) things vying for your attention. Hope you have an awesome rest-of-the-week.

US Leads In Bitcoin Mining Since China’s Latest Crack Down
China’s latest crackdown on bitcoin mining has resulted in virtually all of the bitcoin mining there to leave the country. 

Mining rig manufacturers have since turned their attention to new markets in North America and Asia to recover their losses. 
​
The US now runs the lion’s share of the global hash rate at 35.4%. Read more to learn how emerging global players are responding to this shift in light of upcoming climate talks in Glasgow. 

Why this matters:
While a lot of folks and the media have looked at China's crack down on bitcoin and mining as negative, in the name of decentralization and watching the state of geo-political affairs globally, this has been positive for folks in the pro-Capitalist and pro-free markets world. We'll have to wait and see if the US is able to maintain its lead going forward. This is where policies, regulations, and clarity will matter.

McDonald's China To Give Away 188 NFTs
Despite the China crypto ban, McDonald’s China will give away 188 NFTs to celebrate its 31st anniversary.

The “Big Mac Rubik’s Cube” NFTs were created in partnership with Cocafe (a digital asset creation agency) and are built on the Confluux public blockchain.

CITIC Group (a state-owned investment company of the People’s Republic of China) owns the majority of McDonald’s China’s stake. 

Why this matters:
Interestingly, McDonald’s decision to introduce NFTs seems to contradict the Chinese authority’s intent to completely ban all crypto operations in the country.

Bitcoin Trading Volume Outperforms Top Stocks… By A LotRecent data shows Bitcoin’s average daily trading volume is nearly 4x higher(on average) than the top stocks Tesla (TSLA), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT) between October 1st and 11th.
The higher trading activity could indicate that more investors want to get involved in order to profit from the ongoing rally Bitcoin has been seeing in October, or eh hem, "Uptober".
Investors may now be encouraged after BTC’s red September (aka "Rekt-ember") and are now looking to rotate funds into Bitcoin in light of its 20%+ gains so far this month.

Why this matters:
Folks are on the edge of their seats wondering if we'll hit new ATH (All Time Highs) on the price of Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies with the continued "Uptober" up-trend. Plus, remember, we also have $BTFD (newly highly anticipated Bitcoin Futures ETF) launching tomorrow.

DeFi Guides Your Grandparents Can Follow 👵🏻
​DeFi (decentralized finance) is an exciting new investment category for adventurous blockchain bulls, but it's not without its complexity and nuance. 
If you want a comprehensive source for all things DeFi -  broken down in plain English, then Let’s Do DeFi is one resource you’ll want to bookmark. It is updated regularly and includes:

• DeFi Need-To-Know Topic Summaries
• Crypto Terms Explained In 3 Sentences:
• Tutorials - Start Using DeFi
• DeFi Resources & People To Follow
• And more...

Retire On The Blockchain with A Diverse Portfolio
​This is not investment advice. BUT... holding retirement funds in a traditional bank (in an IRA or 410(k)) for any significant period of time, leaves you exposed to mercurial monetary policy and government agendas. Thankfully, blockchain and crypto are providing a safe haven for savvy investors looking to preserve their wealth over time.
​
By allocating a portion of your retirement funds into stablecoins held on the blockchain, you can earn up to 8.8% APY interest compared to less than 1% on your IRA accounts. 

 COMING UP:

• AMA with Jesse Proudman of Makara on October 22nd, 12-1pm PST
• More coming up --- stay tuned! 

In case you didn't know, all AMAs with guests are recorded and posted on our podcast and YouTube show, Windshield Time. Here are some recent AMA videos:

• Hong Fang, CEO of Okcoin
• Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius
• NFTs with Maggie Xu, CEO of MetaSpace
• Crypto Taxes with Patrick Larsen (ZenLedger)
• [NEW!] Jerry David Chan (OG Bitcoiner) 

Coming soon... AMA recordings with the TaxBit team, Nick Soman (Decentralized Healthcare), and Neil Bergquist (CEO of Coinme).
Join my weekly AMA , every Friday, 12-1pm PSTBlockchain is a game changer as a powerful alternative technology to what most businesses use today. Cryptocurrencies and other kinds of digital tokens are fascinating. This meetup is all about focusing our time on global impactful topics, not just crypto-fluffery.

Join us if you want to get into real authentic discussions about what really matters in the blockchain space and have some actual FUN while we're at it, via the Blockchain Underground.

See you next week!
– Arry (@ArryinSeattle)

Arry's Airdrop #10: Welcome to Uptober 🚀​
Hope your "Uptober" is going well and whatever bags you're holding are mooning. "Rektember" was certainly overfilled past the brim with news, highlights and lowlights I can't even begin to summarize without going over the top in this intentionally summarized newsletter to you. And less than a dozen days into "Uptober", we're already seeing all kinds of noise and signals - and it's certainly has been tricky picking the ones to pay attention to. 

I'd say if anything, take some time when the noise is high to take a step back to learn the fundamentals. Some ideas to start with (if you haven't already started down the rabbit hole):

• Always, back to Bitcoin: monetary/fiscal policies, Austrian economics, the protocol, etc. It's the oldest and most mature and deserves our respect.
• Learn the basics of economics - not just the one that was and continues to be spoon fed to us globally (Keynesian/Modern Monetary Theory). 
• How the US government functions. It's a high-friction government system, by design. Back to high school U.S History and Government - refresh your memory about our legislative, judicial and executive branches, our various agencies (SEC, CFTC, FinCEN, IRS, Treasury, etc...). And as you refresh your memory of how this all works, pay more attention to what's going on in the market and in our politics (federal and local). Pay attention. 

Most of us Americans, we have a lot of waking up, catching up to do - whether it's learning the fundamentals or even learning some financial basics. Don't push it to "doing it later", do a little bit, every day. It's not easy - I know firsthand. If you ever want to trade notes, ask questions/for pointers, or need resources, I'm doing whatever I can every day to help:

• AMA every Friday 12-1pm - Join us.
• Shy? Curious about what an AMA is like? Check out our previous ones.
• Find me in the community Slack channel - Feel free to DM me. I reply to every single one daily.
• Join the waitlist to my next personal cohort - I'm currently trying to figure out how to launch a 3 day workshop version of it.
• Find me on Twitter @ArryinSeattle. I respond to all DMs.
• Email me. I'm actually NOT the best at staying on top of my email to be frank - I do my best to reply to every email personally, and really have been touched by all the supportive emails from you/the community these past fews. It keeps me going with these newsletters burning the midnight candle every Monday night. :)

Thank you to everyone for reading and engaging. I know we're all so busy and have so many other (maybe more fun) things vying for your attention. Hope you have an awesome rest-of-the-week.

Crypto Market Cap Swells to $2.1 Trillion as 'Uptober' Continues
​With ‘Rektember’ done and dusted, it appears that ‘Uptober' is officially here. Bitcoin’s historical month over month price action has continued this year with October seeing BTC punch through the $50k barrier.
Bitcoin is now back over a $1T market cap (about half the total crypto market cap) up from $40,996 on September 29, to $57,538.85 at the time of writing on late night Monday, October 11th. 

Why this matters:
"Rektember" to "Uptober", in these cycles of bulls and bears, it's important to remember that there's an incredibly rich history, especially in bitcoin that demonstrate the foundational fundamentals of this space. The third alt coin bull run we've seen is definitely fun. NFT parties attracting enthusiasts left and right is incredible. Don't forget, all of this was incepted almost 13 years ago (10/31/2008) with the Satoshi Nakamoto white paper. Here's a quick 12 minute video where on 10/06/2014 was a famous incursion now known as the "Slaying of the Bitcoin Bear Whale". Click this link to view.

Yang Launches ‘Forward Party’ & Supports Bitcoin
Andrew Yang, former Presidential Candidate and ex-member of the Democratic Party, announced this week that he’s starting a new political party, The Forward Party with the slogan, “Not left, not right, forward”.
​
Yang tweeted: “[I’m a] Big proponent of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies generally - [I] want to allow fiat prices to go down as they should as things get more efficient instead of assuming the inflation model".

See a summary of Yang’s thoughts on Bitcoin, and track this story as it develops.

Why this matters:
Something to note is the stance from the more "OG" Bitcoiners. Seemingly positive is that this national influencer, Yang is evangelizing Bitcoin, advocating it, and even seemingly helping educate the masses about the perils ahead for us in "fiat money". The problem to watch out for is that Yang will and currently has not been able to make sense of his prior advocacy of the UBI (universal basic income) and the true understanding of the economic institution driving bitcoin. It's something to watch to see IF and how he will be able to come to terms with this major difference in the fundamentals.

​SEC Green-Lights Volt Bitcoin Revolution ETF
Volt Equity (California) filed SEC documents to launch a new type of exchange-traded fund with direct exposure to Bitcoin (Volt Bitcoin Industry Revolution ETF).

According to their recent filing on Oct. 1, the Volt Crypto Industry Revolution and Tech ETF will track the performance of “Bitcoin Industry Revolution Companies” – publicly listed companies that either hold a majority of their net assets in bitcoin, like MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR), or that make a majority of their profits through mining or building mining equipment, like Marathon Digital Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA).

Why this matters:
In the past, the SEC has been reluctant to approve any product that directly holds and tracks the performance of Bitcoin, so this news is in the line of bullish for American bitcoin supporters. Take note however, that a LOT of companies have applied for the elusive ETF that actually holds BTC. And MORE companies will continue to apply. The SEC is bound to approve at least one eventually. As a side note, there is already a Canadian ETF holding BTC.  What's taking so long? Word on the street in a conspiracy theory kind of way is that until the US has created solid footing for itself on its specifically BTC strategy, the US will continue with its "regulation through enforcement" or "dodgy appearance" on the topic overall to continue to "buy more time" in the global market game theory underway. The U.S. government is powerful - don't underestimate it. It intends to continue to hold its #1 position for a very long time.

COMING UP:

• AMA with Neil Bergquist, CEO of Coinme on October 15th, 12-1pm PST
• AMA with Jesse Proudman of Markara on October 22nd, 12-1pm PST
• More coming up --- stay tuned! 

​In case you didn't know, all AMAs with guests are recorded and posted on our podcast and YouTube show, Windshield Time. Here are some recent AMA videos:

• Hong Fang, CEO of Okcoin
• Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius
• NFTs with Maggie Xu, CEO of MetaSpace
• Crypto Taxes with Patrick Larsen (ZenLedger)
• [NEW!] Jerry David Chan (OG Bitcoiner) 

Coming soon... AMA recordings with the TaxBit team and Nick Soman (Decentralized Healthcare)!!

Join my weekly AMA , every Friday, 12-1pm PSTBlockchain is a game changer as a powerful alternative technology to what most businesses use today. Cryptocurrencies and other kinds of digital tokens are fascinating. This meetup is all about focusing our time on global impactful topics, not just crypto-fluffery.

Join us if you want to get into real authentic discussions about what really matters in the blockchain space and have some actual FUN while we're at it, via the Blockchain Underground.

See you next week!
– Arry (@ArryinSeattle)

Welcome to Arry's Airdrop #09! 
Happy October - this never-ending year in this pandemic seems to be flying by so quickly, and so much has happened already this year. Almost a blur. Personally, it was great to go check out Miami for the Bitcoin conference and see a lot of familiar faces (and meet new ones too). We've continued to build strong relationships with our policy makers here in Cascadia. I've met many new folks I'd call friends as we've been coordinating state by state (from FL to NY to MI to TX to CA and Cascadia), and with federal (especially the Blockchain Association) on better ways to collaborate in the name of blockchain/cryptocurrency advocacy. I created and launched another Blockchain & Crypto Fundamentals course. On the personal front, I'm pregnant with our third boy. Our eldest son started kindergarten and we even moved. I'm grateful for the opportunity to be on this journey with you and hope that we can find ways to support and serve you.

What's my point? Let's not be strangers - please find me in our community Slack channel (it's an open Slack for anyone in the community). Shoot me a reply to this email and let's catch up. Feedback. Suggestions. Random friendly comment. Or just a simple hello. I'd love to hear from you.

​Airdrop #09: @jack turned on Bitcoin tipping! ✨
​A little over a week ago, in case anyone missed it, the tipping feature became enabled on Twitter ✨.

Back in 2018-2019, this was one of those features I was wishing existed (not just on Twitter, but also Uber, grocery stores, gas stations, etc) - and now it does. I even considered going out and building a dApp (decentralized application) focused on the Bitcoin tipping scenario at one point.

Twitter did it and went even further - enabling tipping to connect directly to other services like Venmo, CashApp, and more. A super positive note, Twitter does NOT take any cut of the transaction - they only connect. (Kudos to Twitter for not being yet another greedy middleman in people's transactions.) 

See below for my screen (in-progress) as I went through and setup my mobile profile on Twitter. You can see that the user interface is very simple and easy to follow. Not scary at all.

BTW - If you haven't setup your Bitcoin Strike account yet (the CEO is an OG, Jack Mallers) --- Join Strike and earn $5 (yay!) when you sign up and verify your account using my referral code 0VIFRV: https://invite.strike.me/0VIFRV. Remember, Strike uses the Lightning Network - faster cheaper BTC payments. It's what you'd use to send BTC to El Salvador or any country with Strike enabled, for free. Also remember the NFL football player, Russell Okung who demanded to get his wages paid in Bitcoin? They're doing that using Strike as well. One of the best ways to learn, is to try it out. Or as folks in this space say, "do your own research". 

What's Strike, according to Strike?

"Strike is the easiest way to send, spend, remit, and invest your money. Onboard in seconds and unlock the future of digital payments. Simply link a payment method, deposit funds, and let us take care of the rest. What do people use Strike for? Strike is used to buy and sell bitcoin, tip on the web, send and receive micropayments, remit money, and make payments with friends." 

Why you should care. Here's a couple of reasons:

1. Now anyone, everyone, including the billions of unbanked people in the world, to access one of the best financial solutions of the world, Bitcoin. Did you know, that access to any kind of financial product is one of the biggest indicators of quality of life a person can have? Over 2 billion people don't have access to any of the products we in the U.S. take for granted, every day. 
2. Jack Dorsey, CEO of both tech giants Square and Twitter, is walking the talk, publicly using the influence he has at his fingertips to do so.  He also believes in global financial inclusion and accessibility, especially for underserved communities. We'll see how much of an impact Jack will have in the end. Time will tell. Extremely bullish, he believes Bitcoin will become the native currency of the internet. He is quoted to have said: “Bitcoin changes absolutely everything,” Dorsey said Friday at the Bitcoin 2021 Conference. “I don’t think there is anything more important in my lifetime to work on.”
   In fact, “if I were not at Square or Twitter, I would be working on bitcoin. If [bitcoin] needed more help than Square or Twitter, I would leave them for bitcoin,” he said. “But, I believe both companies have a role to play.”
   
   “Whatever I can do, whatever my companies can do to make [bitcoin] more accessible to everyone is how I’m going to spend the rest of my life,” Dorsey said.
   

I closed out my Blockchain & Crypto Fundamentals cohort last week - it was bittersweet. I woke up Monday (October 4th) missing the class and holding myself back from writing them today. I wanted to share a couple of key presentations that really influenced me during my journey over the past several years. Actually in fact, I saw these live at the conference Russell Okung (yes the same NFL guy) hosted for us in LA back in 2019: 

• The Legend of Satoshi Nakamoto by Jill Carlson
• Bitcoin is the Ultimate Social Justice by Jimmy Song

Definitely recommend watching those two presentations if you get a chance. Let me know what you think too after you watch them - would love to trade notes.What I've learned is that whether you're excited about the protocols and technology or the cryptocurrencies, it all starts with the fundamentals. Fundamentals are everything to do with the theory, the context, the history and the "why it matters".  

The waitlist has already been filling up quickly for my next "Blockchains & Cryptos Fundamentals" course. Get on the waitlist and get in-the-know. Standby, I'll be releasing a THREE DAY workshop version of this course for those that need an even more compressed and curated course.

COMING UP:

• AMA with decentralized health insurance Decent's CEO, Nick Soman on October 8th, 12-1pm PST
• AMA with Neil Bergquist, CEO of Coinme on October 15th, 12-1pm PST
• AMA with Jesse Proudman of Markara on October 22nd, 12-1pm PST
• More coming up --- stay tuned! 

​In case you didn't know, all AMAs with guests are recorded and posted on our podcast and YouTube show, Windshield Time. Here are the recent AMA videos: 

• Jennifer Mace on Crypto Tax
• Hong Fang, CEO of Okcoin
• Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius
• NFTs with Maggie Xu, CEO of MetaSpace
• Crypto Taxes with Patrick Larsen (ZenLedger)

Coming soon... I have to post the AMA with Jerry David Chan (OG Bitcoiner) and the TaxBit team shortly. Will share links as soon as they are ready.
​
Join my weekly AMA , every Friday, 12-1pm PSTBlockchain is a game changer as a powerful alternative technology to what most businesses use today. Cryptocurrencies and other kinds of digital tokens are fascinating. This meetup is all about focusing our time on global impactful topics, not just crypto-fluffery.

Join us if you want to get into real authentic discussions about what really matters in the blockchain space and have some actual FUN while we're at it, via the Blockchain Underground.

See you next week!
– Arry (@ArryinSeattle)