If you’re like most crypto investors, the bear market that began last November has worn you out.
Since the sector peaked last November, bitcoin (BTC) is down 66%.
And Ethereum (ETH), the second-biggest crypto by market value, is also down 66%.
On top of that, there’s been a chorus of negativity around crypto in the mainstream press. Here are some samples from 99Bitcoins.com…
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“Crypto Is Dead” – The Spectator (5/9/22)
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“All Crypto Should Die in a Fire” – Current Affairs (5/13/22)
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“Crypto-Assets Are Worth Nothing” – Politico (5/25/22)
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“Bitcoin Is Utterly Worthless” – Business Standard (6/25/22)
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“Virtual Currency Is a Ponzi Scheme” – Forbes (6/26/22)
But as you’ll see today, these obituaries – along with the hundreds more mainstream reporters have penned over bitcoin’s lifetime – are wrong.
The Grim Reaper isn’t coming for crypto.
Instead, crypto will be the backbone of the next evolution of the internet… one that will allow us to transact and profit directly from the content we create online.
First, let’s look at the price action of the top two cryptos. Because after all the negativity, things are looking up.
See for yourself…
At the time of writing, bitcoin is up 11% over the past two weeks. And Ethereum is up 39%.
We’re not out of the woods yet. Both cryptos are still deep in bear markets (20% or more falls from a peak).
But a “Ponzi scheme” doesn’t rebound after a crash.
Financier Bernie Madoff ran the world’s largest Ponzi scheme. It defrauded thousands of investors out of tens of billions of dollars.
When it collapsed, it collapsed for good.
It didn’t then soar to new heights – as bitcoin and Ethereum have done after every major drop.
Investors continue buying after the crashes because they know crypto is a breakthrough technology that will transform the world.
In 1993, when only a small group of tech geeks knew what the internet was, he wrote the code for one of the first widely available web browsers, Mosaic.
It morphed into Netscape, which become the first big dot-com IPO (initial public offering) of the 1990s.
In 2009, he cofounded venture capital (“VC”) firm Andreessen Horowitz. There, he invested in Twitter (TWTR), Facebook (FB), Foursquare, GitHub, and Pinterest (PINS) when they were still startups.
These and other early-stage tech investments have amassed him a personal fortune of $1.6 billion, according to Forbes.
They’ve also made him one of the most influential Silicon Valley VCs.
He’s been in the top 10 of the Vanity Fair New Establishment List… on the Time 100 list of the world’s most influential people… and on the Forbes Midas List of Tech’s Top Investors.
In short, Andreessen is one of the most qualified and successful tech investors and visionaries in the world.
And despite the recent price falls, he’s a big backer of crypto.
In May, Andreessen Horowitz raised a $4.5 billion crypto fund – the world’s largest. That brings the firm’s crypto exposure to $7.6 billion.
You can listen to – and even agree with – the mainstream media’s bearish take on crypto. But first, you should at least hear Andreessen out on why one he’s putting billions into crypto startups.
In other words, it’s a way to send and receive payments online without relying on the banking system.
And that’s a big deal…
When Andreessen created Mosaic in the early 1990s, the internet was rudimentary compared to where it is today.
You got online using a clunky dial-up modem. Pages took ages to load. They could barely handle images… let alone video.
There was no way to send payments online – a huge problem for entrepreneurs looking to build businesses on the internet.
And there was no easy way to plug the internet into the banking system.
It still ran on mainframe computers dating back to the 1960s.
Without any way of getting paid directly, content creators turned to running ads instead.
But that changes with crypto…
It allows us to securely send money online directly to anyone in the world 24/7, without a middleman.
It’s also great for “microtransactions” – transactions for fractions of a cent.
Bitcoin, for instance, is divided into satoshis. There are 100 million of them in a bitcoin. This enables all kinds of payments that weren’t possible before.
Andreessen explained the significance of that in a recent interview with podcaster Sam Harris…
Web 1.0 was read-only. You went online to do searches and read stuff. Unless you knew how to make a website, all you could do was consume information.
Web 2.0 is what my partner Chris Dickson calls “read-write.” It’s the era of user-generated content we’re in today. Blogs became easy to set up. People started posting on social networks. They began making YouTube videos. You weren’t just consuming. You were creating content, too.
But native internet money – aka crypto – changes that. Andreessen again…
Web 3.0, which is where we’re headed with crypto, is read-write and own. You can own money online. You can also own your content and get paid for it with money that’s native to the internet.
We have a chance for crypto to fill in all the things we wish we’d been able to do from the start. We now have a money layer and an ownership layer on top of the internet we know today.
I know it’s hard when just about everybody in the mainstream media is saying it’s dead.
But we’ve recommended staying the course all the way through this crash… and the crashes before it.
We’ve even recommended you start building up your crypto holdings at bear market discounts.
Here’s our own crypto investing expert, Teeka Tiwari…
If you strip away your fears and look at the facts, you can come to only one conclusion: Crypto is here to stay. While your fear might be telling you one thing… some of the smartest minds in tech are saying something completely different. And they’re backing it with billions of dollars in financing.
We’re at the start of a tech trend that’ll completely reshape the way we live, do business, and socialize in the years ahead. So it’s critical you don’t fall victim to volatility by panic selling. Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
So if you already own bitcoin, Ethereum, and other crypto assets, stay strong. This bear market could get worse before it gets better. But long term, the future is bright.
Until tomorrow,
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Chris Lowe
July 25, 2022