You May Never Forgive Yourself if You Miss the Boat Here
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they realize: “Aww, hell, I missed the boat!”
I’ll call that a modern rephrase of a similar comment a trade-union activist made way back yonder in 1918. The activist, Nicholas Klein, was looking to encourage workers affiliated with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America union, who at the time were on strike for better pay and working conditions.
The sentiment behind my rephrase is not so different, really.
Other than the fact that no one’s on strike. We’re not pushing for better pay or working conditions. And this has nothing to do with amalgamation or clothing.
Or unions.
It does, however, center on encouragement.
In particular, my encouragement for you to involve yourself with bitcoin while you still can.
Please, keep reading…
See, banking behemoth Citigroup announced earlier this month that it has a developed a revolutionary business service built on the blockchain—the technology that powers bitcoin and all the other cryptocurrencies in the world.
This new service uses “smart contracts” to zip large sums of money around the world on a private blockchain Citi built specifically for this purpose. Smart contracts are bits of blockchain coding that execute a contract independently and autonomously only when every specified parameter is met.
Now, I realize that seems about as exciting as that teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off reading Wikipedia entries for hours on end.
But what Citi is doing is both huge news and, more relevant to my encouragement, the quintessential reason why crypto has a massive future, regardless of anything you hear from Luddite politicians or the officiaries pushing papers and bad policies at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
And what Citi is doing is this: By way of this new blockchain, Citi can “tokenize” deposits, which then allows money to move around the globe in the relative blink of an eye. As a reminder, “tokenization” is the process of taking something and turning it into a digital asset that lives on the blockchain.
This is not tech for me and you. This is tech for big business, like multinational companies based in Country X, but which have to pay employers and suppliers and whoever in Countries Y, Z, P, and C.
Traditionally, this process takes days, and can only happen when banks are open. So, the CFO of Company X, based in, say, Bangkok, Thailand, needs to pay for a load of copper it bought from Company C in Chile.
Said CFO deals with his company’s Bangkok bank at 10 a.m. local time on Day 1 to arrange the transfer to Chile. That process will generally take 24 to 48 hours to complete. Then, on Day 2 or 3, the Bangkok Bank wires the money to the bank in Santiago, Chile, which then deals with it during Chilean banking hours, which are 10 hours behind Thailand.
When the wire arrives, the Santiago bank will spend a day or so processing it and making sure it’s legit and lands in the correct account—somewhere around Day 4. The Santiago bank is doublechecking the names on the account, account numbers, what have you. And if even the slightest letter is wrong, then the transaction gets hung up and either fails completely, or the Santiago bank has to call Company C to make sure it’s expecting a deposit and where it should go.
Days and days of wasted time with millions of dollars in limbo.
Until now…
Citi’s new service turns those millions of dollars into “tokens” that can move along the blockchain.
Instead of days, the transactions complete literally in minutes.
The Thai CFO at Company X can initiate the transaction late in the afternoon on Day 1, and the CFO at Company C in Chile can confirm its arrival that same day (assuming she’s at the office by 7 or 8 a.m.) At the very least, the Thai CFO would have confirmation the next morning in Bangkok.
The upshot: A huge amount of time and expense is yanked out of the system.
The world’s financial byways jump from two-lane country roads to super-modern superhighways.
And here’s my real point: This is why crypto is going to create vast wealth for those with the fortitude to buy now, when so many remain bearish on the asset class.
There’s a saying in crypto: bear markets are for builders.
The implication is that when bear markets are growling, investors run for cover, and they don’t care what’s going on in the industry. But developers don’t care about the bear and are busy building the products and services that drive various segments of the industry when the next bull market arrives.
That’s precisely what Citi has done. It’s built a service that’s going to drive a gargantuan financial segment when the next bull market kicks off.
Which is why I so adamantly push a crypto-investment strategy to anyone who will give me five minutes of their time.
What Citi has built is proof that crypto is here to stay and that it promises to change life in ways even bigger than the iPhone changed our lives.
When businesses using a new technology can save millions of dollars, bring greater efficiency to their operations, and knock out the headaches and pinch-points that frustrate their customers… that technology is going to spread far and wide.
Again, I really don’t care in the slightest about the SEC, or anti-crypto politicians like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. Honestly, if I could express negative care, that’s where I’d be on this topic.
We’re still in the early days of the revolution, but make no mistake: The revolution is here.
It’s happening everywhere… even as you read this paragraph. Citi is just one—albeit very perfect—example of what’s taking shape across global finance, entertainment, gaming, personal finance, online payment processing, education, etc., and on and on.
This is why almost all of the spare cash I can cobble together goes into crypto, especially bitcoin and Solana.
Seeing where we’re going as a society is painfully obvious when you look past the noise of government jibber-jabber and the small-minded naysayers who understand crypto as well as I understand how to pilot a tugboat.
I know with absolute confidence that we’re going to come upon a day when crypto prices have mooned, and those who are shunning the asset class today are going to exclaim, “Aww, hell, I missed the boat!”
Don’t miss the boat.
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