An Economy Without Humans

In time, pretty much everyone jumps on the El Jefe bandwagon.

The latest bandwagon jumper is Jamie Dimon, head of the Moose Lodge known as JPMorgan Chase. Since Day One, Jamie has disliked crypto. Among many other derisive comments, he has said:

• “Bitcoin is a fraud that will eventually blow up.”
• Crypto investing is “worse than tulip bulbs.”
• “Bitcoin itself has no intrinsic value.”
• “Crypto itself doesn’t do anything.”
• Blockchains are “decentralized Ponzi schemes.”
• The “only true use case for [crypto] is criminals, drug traffickers… money laundering, tax avoidance, sex traffickers, ransomware.”
• And… “If you’re stupid enough to buy it, you’ll pay the price for it one day.”

Yet, just recently Jamie spent a few days at the Future Investment Initiative summit in Saudi Arabia, and amid a roundtable discussion he offered up this:

“I’ve got away with no damage so far [in terms of hating on crypto, but] crypto is real. All of us will use it to facilitate better transactions.”

Then, to confirm that he is, indeed, addicted to his daily Field Notes subscription and has been taking to heart all that El Jefe writes, crypto’s newest fanboy added that public blockchains, stablecoins, and smart contracts will play pivotal roles in enhancing the operational efficiency for businesses like, oh, say, banks. He now sees crypto providing real-world utility in finance and payments.

Hmmm.

One of us who looks just like me has been saying since the late 2010s that this is where the entire world is headed.

As I’ve written too many times to remember, crypto is the future of everything.

I’m not being precocious when I write that. I do mean “everything.”

Daily spending will happen on the blockchain by way of crypto like Solana, which is already processing more transactions than all other blockchains combined and is on its way to 1 million transactions per second. That kind of mile-marker will change the way business and industry see crypto in the same way the original internet boom changed the way business and industry saw opportunity online.

Gaming and entertainment are exploding onto the blockchain, with some games now doing millions in annual revenue. Scientific research and funding are happening on the blockchain. Virtual private networks (VPNs) that no central organization controls are building out on the blockchain.

Education is taking off on the blockchain, and I told attendees at a recent conference in Dublin about a so-called “real-world asset” company on the blockchain that has fundamentally changed the way Wall Street tracks residential real estate price changes; now investors can track changes daily instead of quarterly.

But here’s where the new trends are taking shape that promise to reframe large segments of society:

• M2M: The Machine-to-Machine economy, where smart devices automatically trade, pay, and communicate with each other using AI and the blockchain. So imagine cars paying for their own charging or tolls in real time, or automatically paying for gasoline when you pull in for a fill-up. You can leave your wallet in the car. M2M will be huge in the next few years.
• X402 Payment Systems: An emerging blockchain protocol designed to connect global financial systems with instant, compliant, cross-border settlements using digital currencies.
• T2E: Tap-to-Earn that rewards users in crypto for simple phone interactions like tapping or clicking—turning everyday engagement into micro-income. Imagine a blockchain-based social media app that takes on Twitter/X by offering its users micro-payments (they add up over time to real money) for engaging regularly on the platform, or engaging with advertisers on the platform.
• X.509 Crypto Banking: A new global security standard behind digital certificates that verifies identities in crypto banking, ensuring transactions are safe, authenticated, and compliant.

When you’re going about a normal daily life and crypto is sort of just an amusement, it’s easy to miss this kinda stuff and not even know these innovations are taking shape even as you read these words.

But I’m swimming in the deep end of this ocean every day. I see all these developments taking shape. I see all the comments that pop up randomly in my Twitter/X feed and on Telegram… which is why I am always looking so far ahead, to the connections that are happening seven dots and a couple of years into the future.

That’s where the opportunity lies.

You can’t invest in the “hottest thing now” because by definition that hottest thing now is, well, already hot.

To create real wealth in crypto, you have to “surf the left tail,” as I call it. You need to arrive before the entire world is chirping about M2M, for instance.

There’s lots of risk in that strategy—absolutely. Projects in crypto that seem like fantabulous ideas can go belly up for a thousand reasons.

Then again, they can succeed, and in that success turn pennies into hundred-dollar bills.

I told the Dublin attendees, for instance, about an opportunity emerging in a crypto-based point-of-sale system… I won’t announce here what it is because that would be unfair to those who flew to Ireland to attend the event. But I will say that crypto point-of-sale is a huge opportunity.

It speaks to exactly what Jamie Dimon talked about in Saudi Arabia in terms of banking efficiency.

You and I and everyone else with a credit/debit card will be using crypto-based PoS systems soon enough. You might not know it because the process will look nearly identical to what you know today: Swipe your card or your phone in front of a point-of-sale terminal to complete your transaction. Easy peasy.

But all the backend guts will run across the blockchain instead of the existing banking networks. The benefit: Merchants get paid immediately, not days later when the transaction clears, and banks become even more efficient (read: more profitable).

We consumers will be able to pay in stablecoins tied to the dollar—or any other currency such as the euro, the yen, even stablecoin gold. Or we can choose to pay in whatever other cryptocurrencies the PoS provider allows, such as Solana or maybe even a meme-coin like Bonk.

The point is that this is already well underway. It’s still waaaay early, but it’s coming nevertheless. Being this early means you risk losing everything… or you stand to make an absolute killing from a tiny investment.

That’s what I love about crypto—the asymmetrical risk-reward profile. Risk a little, win a lifestyle.

So, my message to you: If you’re not already onboard the El Jefe bandwagon, you’re not too late. Just jump aboard with Jamie Dimon; expect a volatile, bumpy, insane ride; prepare yourself to lose your money on small, risky crypto plays (which is why you should only put a small amount of wealth at risk), and then find yourself exuberantly celebrating a huge profit when the promise becomes the reality.

That’s crypto.

And even one of the world’s biggest crypto critics—Jamie Dimon—is now in for the ride.