Remembering the birth of the the metaverse
The term ‘metaverse’ is used liberally today, but it came into form at the start of the PC (personal computer) revolution in early 1980s. The Apple ][+ catalysed the movement with upper/middle class being able to afford such computers in the early 1980s.
Hundreds of Bulletin Board Systems were born across the US. I was the sysop (system operator) of The Insane Asylum — a BBS that was featured in Businessweek as one of three BBSs in the US that had the most user traffic.
I was Damien the Dreaded and Redrum. My close friend Drew Munster (aka Zero Page) and I formed The Untouchables — a pirate/code breaking group that was considered #1 in terms of being able to break code then distribute (pirate) all software within 48 hours that was made for the Apple computer. Krakowicz was considered the top code breaker. I was considered the top distributor. At one point, I had all software ever made for the Apple, a collection of cracked software that consisted of over 2,000 double-sided 5 1/4″ floppies.
I was also invited by my friends The Wizard of Arpanet (Eric) and The Cracker (Bill Landreth) into the top hackers group — The Inner Circle. I initially agreed so am listed in the first Inner Circle, but then after careful thought due to the nature of what we were doing, politely declined. A number of members had written for the elite TAP magazine. The hacker’s mandate back then was to never destroy, just create, but the laws were just forming at the time in terms of unlawful activities, so it was best to just be an ‘honorary’, anonymous member.
The Cracker was using various computer systems including GTE Telemail to create communications platforms where we could text communicate and post msgs in real-time. Back then, amongst us hackers, we were able to create up to 59-way conference calls for free with anyone, play Codacas which was a popular multi-user game played on the Control Data hardware at Temple University in the early 80s, poke around Autovon which was a major part of the US government’s Defense Communications System (DCS), and game/code/hack/pirate til sunup.
It was a golden age that only a fraction of a percent experienced. And while one encyclopaedia insists I’m two different people because of the long timeline and because of how I look (and feel), biohacking works ^_^ #iamnotawitch #bioage25 #chronoage:oP.
All that said, while many argue you can’t form meaningful bonds unless you physically meet or at least see what the person looks like, I and many of the others in the early 1980s are living testaments to the deeply powerful bonds that resulted from regular and numerous phone calls, BBS interaction, and gaming back then. The bonds created were enduring.
With blockchain, the metaverse graduated from high school with high honors. Mass adoption is next. While most GenZers and GenAlphas spend much time living in the metaverse across numerous gaming and social networking platforms, more people across all generations are participating. Axie Infinity revolutionised play-to-earn (P2E) where many in developing countries can earn more gaming than they can at their regular jobs.
NFTs tend to perform well when ETH is weak because gas fees drop. This enables others to trade and mint NFTs at lower gas fees.
Metaverses such as Sandbox (SAND) and Decentraland (MANA) also offer other dimensions including gaming, NFTs, and DeFi, thus their multi-billion dollar valuations are understandable. The market is anticipating the future of how fast the metaverse will grow, with these two companies being the two leaders, much as the market anticipated how big Amazon (AMZN) would become when it was soaring in price in the late 1990s despite no earnings for a next few years.
How is this possible?
For those who may struggle to understand how digital can have any value, digital gaming items can command prices as high as six to seven figures in dollars, due to their utility within the gaming platform in question. Similarly, digital land can command high prices because it may serve as a key location in a game, or in advertising. Imagine being able to advertise your company on the Google.com landing page next to the Google logo for 24 hours. While this is not allowed, such would command a price tag of at least an eight or nine figure sum.
That said, buying land in SAND is far more volatile and risky due to low levels of liquidity, hype, buggy software, empty servers, and huge opportunities for abuse. These issues will evolve, such is the nature of S-curve technology but, in the meantime, SAND tokens are far less risky than buying the digital land.
As a quantamentalist that combines fundamentals and technicals as well as on and offchain metrics, I use chart technicals to time my entries and exits into top alts such as SAND. For now, crypto remains on a cash/sell signal, so I patiently await the next buy signal either by way of the rare and liquid cryptocurrency bucking the trend in price along with compelling fundamentals, or by an entry signal issued by BTC and/or ETH.
I prefer to use BTC and ETH as the two main guides. At the same time, I do look for high quality coins bucking weakness in BTC and/or ETH. There are also times when BTC and ETH may lag or trade sideways while a couple of leading altcoins are moving higher. For example, during the mini-top in June 2017, NEO which was called Antshares back then, bucked the trend due to it being the first Chinese blockchain.
China was formidable then since they had yet to ban ICOs and miners and other aspects of blockchain. NEO soared several hundred percent in the coming weeks despite both BTC and ETH still healing their wounds from the mini-climax top in June.
As for institutional buying, there is far more utility among the top alt coins than ever before spread across DeFi, DEXs, dApps, DAOs, NFTs, gaming, and an evolving metaverse. The crypto cycles are getting longer and less volatile as a consequence. Indeed, Bitcoin’s volatility should continue to diminish in the coming years to where it can become a more reliable store-of-value. But my overall strategy has not changed materially in how I scout for outperforming altcoins when the window of opportunity is open.
I will keep all members of www.selfishinvesting.com informed.
(͡:B ͜ʖ ͡:B)
Dr Chris Kacher, bestselling author/top 40 charted musician/PhD nuclear physics UC Berkeley/Record breaking audited accts: stocks+crypto/blockchain fintech specialist. Co-founder of Virtue of Selfish Investing, TriQuantum Technologies, and Hanse Digital Access. Dr Kacher bought his first Bitcoin at just over $10 in January 2013 and participated in early Ethereum dev meetings in London hosted by Vitalik Buterin. His metrics have called every major top and bottom in Bitcoin since 2011. He was up in 2018 vs the median (-46%) and avg performing crypto hedge fund (-54%) [PwC] and is up well ahead of Bitcoin & alt coins over the cycles as capital is force fed into the top performing alt coins while weaker ones are sold.
Virtue of Selfish Investing Crypto Reports TriQuantum Technologies: Hanse Digital Accesshttps://twitter.com/VSInvesting/ & https://twitter.com/HanseCoin
Originally published at https://mirror.xyz.
