Fat Monies: Anti-Contrarianism in Cryptocurrency Investing

In a first-ever two-hour episode for Venture Stories by Village Global, Erik talks to two of the most interesting crypto thinkers around: Arjun Balaji (@arjunblj), crypto investor, trader and incubator, and Murad Mahmudov (@MustStopMurad), crypto analyst and angel investor.In this wide-ranging and mind-expanding interview, the three discuss a number of topics relating to cryptocurrencies, effects on government, economic history, and predictions for the future, among many other things including:- The arguments for Bitcoin over other cryptocurrencies and whether Bitcoin can be toppled- Why Bitcoin is less like digital gold and more like “digital nuclear weapons”- Whether Bitcoin will be “the MySpace of money”- A history of the Austrian school of economics- The impacts of hard forks on a community- How competition between monies accelerates capitalism- Whether blockchain as a technology is overrated or underrated- The parallels between cryptocurrency and the Asian construction bubble- Institutional movement into cryptocurrencies- The psyche of crypto hedge fund managers- How crypto changes how countries compete for tax revenuesQuotable lines from this episode:“The creation of a non-sovereign sound money system has the potential to be one of the most significant events in our lifetime.” - AB“I view money as a good, just like anything else, and I don’t believe we have pure capitalism until we have competition among currencies.” - MM“Cryptocurrencies in general and in particular Bitcoin are a higher quality form of money.” - MM“Through the fat money lens, all tokens are cryptocurrencies.” - AB“The whole market is like a prediction market for which one or few coins will be the long term money winner.” - MM“Bitcoin is the Schelling point of the market”. - MM“Despite all the fancy bells and whistles that blockchains enable, the fact that nobody can print more Bitcoin is the greatest innovation here.” - MM“The idea that money has to be continuously in circulation is completely non-sensical.” -MM“We’re not trying to build another PayPal here, we’re trying to disrupt central banking.” -MM“Miners don’t control Bitcoin, businesses don’t control bitcoin, users and full nodes control Bitcoin.” - AB“As time goes on, everyone is going to become a Bitcoin maximalist whether they like it or not.” - MM“The number one thing that we can learn from economic history is that if there is an actor that can create more money, they will.” - AB“If there’s free competition around money then the market would never naturally converge around something [the US Dollar] that is expanding at 6% a year. It’s totally irrational.”“Just as we witnessed the separation of church and state, in the next 20-30 years we are going to witness the separation of money and state.” - MM“People who say capitalism is dead or that we are entering the end of capitalism don’t know what they are talking about, because capitalism is going to go into overdrive.” -AB“What previously took a 200-person team in 2000, took a 100-person team in 2007 and takes a 5- or 10-person team now.” - AB“We’re entering an era where businesses will be able to be built and run on the internet by one person.” - AB“These tokens suck as money or are absolutely and utterly useless.” -MM“Almost all of these tokens were unethical fundraising scams by the founders.” - MM“This whole thing [the ICO boom] was a form of IQ arbitrage, where people took advantage of these overvalued shit tokens… Do you want to walk around New York and use a different form of currency at each store?” - MM“Erik, if you’re looking to hold your wealth in the equivalent of gift cards to the Gap,...