Thank you, Lord, for this day. May it be used for your glory! Good morning everyone and welcome to another edition of Friday Inspiration! Also known as Inspiration Friday. I realized I accidentally swap it up sometimes...just keeping things light and breezy, haha!
This week was packed with some big news in the crypto world so I have a few articles about that. However, I did read one article that was really inspiring regarding writing and building an email list, so I threw that in there as a breather. Let’s jump on in!
Bitcoin Historic Taproot Upgrade, Here’s What Changed
https://bitboycrypto.com/bitcoin-historic-taproot-upgrade-heres-what-changed/
This is not the first big upgrade Bitcoin has received, but this Taproot change is the biggest since around 2017.
Wait, Bitcoin can upgrade? I thought it was just set in stone since 2009? Decentralized and untouchable?
Well, yes it is both of those things. But it can still be upgraded. That’s the beauty of it! Not only is it decentralized and untouchable, but it also can’t be antiquated by old technology.
Let me explain. There are a couple of things going on here. First of all, this change is what’s called a “soft fork.” There are two types of changes: a “soft fork” and a “hard fork.” A soft fork is a change where all the previous code is still compatible. That means the Taproot upgrade is more of an added feature; it can be used or it can be ignored, it’s up to the developers.
The second really crucial thing to understand is that Bitcoin is decentralized. These changes were suggestions from the Bitcoin development community. They have been in the works for a couple of years now. To add a change to the Bitcoin network requires a 90% agreement from every single miner running the Bitcoin network! Now that’s democracy right there.
The Taproot change came to that 90% consensus back in June and they set the date for November to go live. The change itself will do some pretty neat technical things, but (if I understand correctly) it should make the network faster, more scalable, and add smart contract functionality. That means people can write programs to run directly on the Bitcoin network, which is pretty neat!
The Simple Writing Formula I’m Using to Get an Additional 100,000 Email Subscribers
https://link.medium.com/oLOik4NXblb
This article was written by one of my favorite Medium authors, Tim Denning. He gives two main pieces of advice in this article: use Twitter and use Substack.
I’ve been using Substack for about a year now and I love it! It’s super easy to use and is an overall great approach to building an email list. Tim has gone fully onboard with Substack and is now using it relentlessly. He’s even doing a course on it. So I feel like I’m ahead of the curve, haha!
The biggest piece of advice for me is Twitter. He suggests creating a strategy around using Twitter to get more people to join your Substack. This is something I have started to try. I’ve been using DeSo a lot, which is built like Twitter. However, they definitely don’t have as many users as Twitter (yet). Therefore, I decided to start Tweeting too (ugh, didn’t know I’d be saying that word). I’ve enjoyed it, though! It’s super easy and way more fun than Instagram ever was. In my opinion.
Plus I like Jack Dorsey (CEO of Twitter) way more than Mark Zuckerburg...I’d much rather support Twitter, haha!
Bitcoin Falls Below $60K as US Infrastructure Bill Moves Ahead
https://decrypt.co/86174/bitcoin-falls-below-60k-us-infrastructure-bill-moves-ahead
What is going on with the price of Bitcoin? It was supposed to skyrocket this month, haha!
I suppose that’s the price of a volatile asset like bitcoin. A lot of the analysts still think we are in a bull market and that bitcoin will continue to rise after this short dip. We’ll see what happens. No one can truly predict what it will do; they can just tell us what the analysis says.
However, there is still the question of why bitcoin dipped? And again, no one knows for sure. There are a couple of possibilities, though.
The first I don’t understand fully, but it regards leveraged trading. The kind of trading where you take a loan out using bitcoin as collateral and then buy more bitcoin with it. And apparently, if it doesn’t rise fast enough, then your collateral is liquidized? Something like that. These leveraged trades along with other long-term bets on bitcoin have added up to around $800 million of bitcoin liquidized this week. That’s a ton of money!
The second thing is that the infrastructure bill passed. What does this have to do with bitcoin? Well, I don’t know how much it’s covered in the news, but in the bill, they decided to throw in a couple of asinine additions regarding crypto. Specifically, they said miners, exchanges, and I think anyone running a smart contract program (correct me if I’m wrong), would be considered brokers. Which means they have to report their users to the IRS. This is impossible. All of these technologies are run pseudo-anonymously, so these people have zero access to names, addresses, etc. They’ll have to figure out a way to get that information or move their operations out of the US in order to comply.
Senators Cynthia Lummis and Ron Wyden are coming to the rescue, though! They are trying to pass some other legislation to exempt certain people from this law. We’ll see what happens.
Staples Center to become Crypto.com Arena in reported $700 million naming rights deal
Here’s some exciting news! Crypto.com has purchased Staples Center! This was the largest naming rights deal in history too! This is a huge move for Crypto.com who is already a sponsor of some huge events like the UFC and Formula 1 racing.
For reference, this is the company I mentioned a while ago that has the cool debit card where you get 2% back and free Spotify. They also offer pretty much anything you would want in the crypto space: an exchange with low fees, a wallet, a Defi exchange, a yield feature, NFTs, the cashback card, and a peer-to-peer payment system in $CRO.
Crypto.com runs on their own blockchain, which is powered by their own cryptocurrency, $CRO.
When this news dropped, the price of $CRO grew about 35% haha! And it’s kept it for a little while now! Very exciting times for any Crypto.com investors!
Well, that’s it for this week! Tay and I are off to Asheville for our 1 year anniversary, and then on to Thanksgiving! Crazy how fast time flies.
As an FYI, I will be taking off writing next week. Enjoy the week, eat tons of food, and take time to think about what you’re thankful for this year. I will talk to y’all after turkey day!