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FinTech

Insightful Interview with Macro Trader who’s Now Investing in Crypto Currencies

How macro trader Novogratz became a bitcoin convert
How macro trader Mike Novogratz became a bitcoin convert

This article/ video interview is with Mike Novogratz, a veteran Wall Street trader who sees a lot of opportunity in the bitcoin ecosystem:

It started with a late-2015 visit to a friendā€™s startup in Brooklyn.

ā€œI expected to see Joe, a dog and one assistant. Instead I saw 30 dynamic young people crammed in a Bushwick warehouse, coding, talking on the phone, making plans for this revolution,ā€ Novogratz said. ā€œMacro guys are instinctive. My instinct was, ā€˜I want to buy a chunk of this company.ā€ā€™

The article mentions that he’s also starting up a $500 million hedge fund to invest in the crypto-space.

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FinTech

John McAfee Interview: Antivirus, Equifax 137 Million User Hack, US Banks & Bitcoin to $500K

Published Sept 7 2017, Romania

Not feeling so well today so I rested and watched an interview with John McAfee about the state of Cyber Security. John is an intelligent, outspoken character who started McAfee antivirus back in the 80s, then I remember him being in the news, on the run and being deported regarding his neighbor in Belize being murdered a few years ago. (He appears suspicious.) Now heā€™s peddling security software again, and crypto opportunities. I took some hopefully pertinent notes from the talk.


Interviewer: Whatā€™s the state of Cyber Security in 2017?

John M: We have none.

While you are watching your phone, your phone is watching you. This is just a fact of life.

The anti-virus paradigm is no longer functional, it doesnā€™t work. And Iā€™m the person who invented it. Viruses arenā€™t the problem, hackers are. Itā€™s a reactive paradigm, and thatā€™s the problem. We have to become proactive. (Heā€™s developing a product ā€œSentinelā€ to ID the hackers coming in.)

Smart phones are spy devices. Google: If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. –Ridiculous.

Everybody exercises different degrees of privacy hundreds of times a day. We are humans, we live in an imperfect world.

On Cryptocurrency:

How secure is Bitcoin? I think itā€™s extremely secure. On the other hand, people put crypto wallets on their smartphones, and over half of smartphones are infected with key-logging software.

Pornography–the first thing the site does is download a rooting software. After the jailbreak, they download a keylogger. Only takes seconds, and from that point on, somebody is watching. People pay the porn sites to push keylogging software on to phones.

If you have an online wallet, an online account, the next day your money may disappear.

We all have secrets, yes? So why are we giving our data to companies?

Why do we use the cloud? It makes life easy, I can access my data from anywhere. The Cloud is OK for some types of things.

Bitcoin is a New Paradigm of Money

Whether bitcoin or Ethereum or Monero or whatever, you need to Educate yourself, it is easy to lose your money in Crypto

Offline wallet: trezor, seed keys display on the trezor, not on desktop. Donā€™t keep your wallet on any device.

Future security: Look 4 hacker, not the malware.

The world is on a dangerous cliff. Weā€™re allowing these devices to master us, not the other way around.

At least a dozen big nation States have the power to bring down another nationā€™s power grid.

I didnā€™t hear anything about the $500K for bitcoin in the talk, but I may have dozed off when he said it. I did find he said that in twitter in July of 2017: ā€œI Promise to ā€˜Eat My Own Dickā€™ If Bitcoin Doesnā€™t Reach 500k In Three Yearsā€Ā  Seems like just a bit of click bait.

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FinTech

Some Items to Research When Studying Altcoins

 Investing Checklist
Investing Checklist

What Are some good rules of research when looking at an Altcoin?

I was watching the above video, by Carter Thomas, a software programmer who’s knowledgeable about finance and marketing, and he mentions a number of useful indicators of a solid company:

    1. Team: who’s working on it?
    2. Community: what sense of a gathering is there?
    3. Wallet: do they have one, and is it easy to use?
    4. Do they outreach and care about everybody?
    5. Revolution Piece: Do they talk about social issues?

For myself, I like to check out GitHub to see what the source code says: is there any developer/project activity, is the coin just a copy or fork of another coin?