We had a death in my family last week.

It was her time. The doctors told her she’d have between 2 days and 2 weeks in hospice. She knew her moment was coming, and she didn’t cry. She didn’t show any fear. She talked about it matter of factly. She was ready. She was blessed with 5 days, long enough to return home where she passed surrounded by friends and family.

Our time is finite and our end is unpredictable. Most don’t know when they have 2 days to 2 weeks to go. The hourglass runs out and that’s that.

Time is the ultimate privilege and the only true wealth. We have the fortune to choose where and how we spend the time we’re given.

You could be doing anything right now, but you’re here with me reading about crypto and investing. I deeply appreciate you being here.

When new subscribers join this newsletter, I ask them to take a few seconds to complete a quick survey.

I use your responses to help me understand who you are, where you are in your crypto and investing journey, and what motivated you to subscribe.

I ask: Why are you interested in learning more about crypto?

I’ve received over 3,500 responses so far, with more coming every day.

Here are some actual, representative responses:

• For freedom. I’m tired of the rat race.

• Simple, libertad financiera

• Would like to retire early

• Looking for make few $$$ just to leave for my grandsons 😁😁😁

• To build financial freedom

It’s consistent across ages, jobs, gender, and every other demographic I can see.

We invest to create freedom of time.

We invest to provide for others — our family, friends, and community.

We want to leave the cubicle for good. Why? To spend our time with the people we love, doing the things that bring us joy.

Crypto, and money more generally, is a means to an end. It’s a proxy for the true goal.

Most of you live in the United States. We are fortunate to have a (mostly) trustworthy and reliable banking system.

When you need to buy something, you just swipe or tap and it works. When a bank fails, the government makes sure your deposits are made whole. The U.S. is home to the largest and most liquid markets ever known to man, and YOU are able to invest in them however you choose. The Constitution explicitly protects the obligrations of contracts, giving you and I recourse and markets predictability.

We get to choose where we transact and with who. This is a privilege, not a right.

The intermediaries that facilitate payments and commerce have financial and legal incentives that keep their behaviors aligned with our own. We have first-world infrastructure that can deliver our goods when we need them, and a powerful Navy protecting the supply chains that keep goods moving around the world.

Many are not so lucky. Many governments run roughshod over their citizenry. Most don’t have the Constitution and the rights it affords.

Authoritarians use the populace as a piggy bank for control and selfish extravagance. Financial tyranny and capital controls are a powerful way to suppress opposition. Well intentioned but poorly designed policy creates runaway inflation, crimps trade, and lowers quality of life.

For these people, those without the privilege of the U.S. financial markets, crypto is more than just hypergambling on memes or chasing a get rich quick scheme.

Crypto is the only banking system they can actually trust.

It’s the easiest place to ditch their local currency and hold stable, useful assets. It’s the only place they can turn for a censorship resistant financial existence. From stablecoins to DeFi to digital gold — crypto is their most powerful tool to provide economic freedom for themselves and their families.

Crypto is more than the lambo jokes and the memes and crypto twitter. It’s more than the speculation and venture capitalists and volatility. It is a platform for global economic freedom. A platform to counter oppression near and far, then and now.

With crypto, transactions go through not because they are allowed, but because no one can stop them.

I’m here to have fun. I’m here to learn. I’m here to make money. Just like you.

But I’m also here spending my limited time on Earth in this industry, because I believe that crypto matters.

This election in the US has been miserable on both sides of the aisle. Neither party has a realistic plan to maintain America’s global economic position - our politicians are addicted to infinitely increasing deficits and quantitative easing and all the rest. The vitriol between all sides is embarrassing.

Does this mean you should ditch your bank and exclusively use DeFi alternatives? No, definitely not. Keep your checking account. Get a traditional mortgage. Keep buying stocks and bonds.

But why put your eggs all in one basket? Why put your complete trust the same institutions that used robo-signers to mass foreclosure on your neighbors in 2009. The ones that fraudulently created accounts in your name just to appease Wall Street analysts. The same ones that through quantitative easing and money printing split our society into the “has-assets” and the “doesn’t-have-assets” and in doing so creating a cost of living crisis.

Crypto must exist, if for nothing else to keep the our financial institutions — both government and commercial — honest and accountable.

Crypto is an alternative, a competitor. A place that can’t be co-opted by politically motiviated policy from the left or the right. A place that works as well on a cell phone in a third-world village as it does in a high-rise on Wall Street. A place that is verifiably free and permissionless for all to transact, invest and store value.

When your institutions fail you, you need a lifeboat. You need an alternative. Thanks to crypto, when institutions misbehave you can transact on another set of rails, on-chain.

If the US can’t stop or won’t running the money printers, then we all should be buying bitcoin to hedge against debasement.

If the Fed wants rates historically low and your bank will only give you 1% on your savings, you should be moving some of your cash on-chain to earn a reasonable yield.

As an emerging asset class with uncorrelated characteristics to other markets, you should own a small bag for the powerful diversification effects and improved risk/reward profile. The only free lunch in finance is diversification.

This is a positive-sum game — crypto isn’t going to replace traditional finance, but it is creating a new alternative. It’s not either / or. It’s both. The pie is getting bigger, and that’s better for everyone.

We only get so much time. I hope you will reflect on your time as I have this week.

We should support technology that gives security and creates freedom for ourselves and others. We must support these systems that make us antifragile to whatever life puts in our way.

I hope you will take the time to learn how to use crypto on-chain (only 13% of you responded to the survey that you have a self-custodied wallet).

Start simple. Put some bitcoin in a wallet for your kid, your niece, nephew, or grandkids college tuition one day.

Deposit some USDC into a blue-chip DeFi protocol like Aave to earn a yield. Buy something with a stablecoin. Play a crypto-powered game or give a crypto social media app a scroll (Warpcast on Farcaster is pretty good). Join some discords and participate in a community.

Vote for pro-crypto candidates in the election next month. Candidates who oppose crypto are telling you that they prefer centralized, mis-aligned, and easy-to-corrupt institutions. They want to be in a position to control you, not liberate you. (And ignore the blatant lies about crypto funding the bad guys — the greatest money laundering system in the world are regulated US banks).

Be the resistance. Be the freedom fighter.

That’s why I’m here. That’s why I choose to spend my time doing this with you every week. Yes, to make money. Yes, to laugh about lambos and private jets and crypto-twitter memes. Yes, to gamble on dog coins that make no sense whatsoever.

But also to do my part to create a better, more open and more free financial system. Freedom to transact, freedom to invest, freedom to choose, globally, by default. A system that works not because I am allowed, but because I can’t be stopped.

Step away from your desk this week and spend time with the people in your life that you care about. Your spouse, parents, kids, grandkids. Touch some grass, as they say.

Time is the ultimate wealth, and it’s fleeting.

Market Cockpit

Crypto Reads

A16Z State of Crypto Report 2024: New data on swing states, stablecoins, AI, builder energy, and more

Stand With Crypto: The Stand With Crypto Alliance, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, champions for clear, common-sense regulations for the crypto industry. We're mobilizing the 52 million crypto owners in the US - a demographic that is younger (60% Gen-Z and Millennials) and more diverse (41% identify as racial minorities) than the general US population - to unlock crypto's innovation potential and foster greater economic freedom.

Portfolio Update

No trades to report. I’m thinking about buying some TAO, but haven’t yet. More next week on this. In the meantime, the memecoin super cycle continues.