We may be mentally ill, but we are not racist; Web3 + DOGE equals the decentralization of power revolution!
It looks like the US can finally put to rest the charge by the shrinking world of corporate media puppets, 'top school' academics, and Hollywood elites that we are a racist society. 😅 We would have thought the 2008 election (and 2012 re-election) of a President of African descent on his father's side would have been proof enough. Or the fact that somewhere between 10 million and 16 million, mainly from Latin countries, have taken significant risks to gate crash out border illegally over the last four years to find economic opportunity and better provide for their families. Or, the fact that a 2023 Gallup survey found 37% of sub-Sahara Africans want to move permanently to the US, up from 29% in 2012, and 28% of those from LatAm and the Caribbean wish to do the same (up from 18% in 2012).
Quite ironically, it took a white, billionaire man beating a multiracial woman of black Caribbean and South Asian heritage for the Presidency to put this debate to rest.
Mr. Trump did indeed win the 2024 election with only a slim 1.6% margin and a 2.5 million voter spread. Neither candidate won over 50% of the vote—Ms. Harris: 48.3%; Boogeyman: 49.9%—and that could well suggest a divided nation. But another slice of those numbers indicates that other than black Americans, the Latinos, women, and GenZ were split pretty evenly between candidates in 2024. Further, support for Mr. Trump has bumped up in all those 'groups,' including a doubling of black votes since his 2020 contest with Great Grandpa Joe and a significant swing within the Latino community—up a breathtaking 9%.
This data may not prove we are not a racist country. Still, it does mean that 'they' who endlessly called Mr. Trump and his supporters' racists' and 'fascists' either got it wrong or the Boogeyman cleverly duped close to half of the Latino community and 20% of blacks to support a white supremacist.🤔
In an insightful post-election monologue on his show, self-professed 'liberal' comedian Bill Maher showed three survey slides that expose the delusional views (mental illness?) brought on by the 'intellectual incest' of 'white progressives.'
Democrats run for office like the voters don't live here—as if they don't go to the grocery store, Starbucks, and the office. But they do, and they actually see women and people of color, and it doesn't seem like some patriarchal, racist nightmare. It turns out that Hispanics are less OK with illegal immigration than Whitey. The votes are in, they don't want Whitey's pity. And black people can't afford to indulge rich white people's need to endlessly self-flagellate—they just want prices to go down, good jobs, and the police to come when they call them. Black people—they are just like us! The Democratic Party has become like a Royal family—that because of so much incest, some of their children are retarded.
—Bill Maher on Realtime with Bill Maher, November 16, 2024
It’s cultural values, not skin color, stupid!
We enthusiastically agree with Thomas Sowell, the renowned American economist and social theorist, who provocatively argues that there is no actual 'majority' in America, as the largest ethnic group (German ancestry) makes up only 16 percent of the population, followed by Africanas (13.7%) and Mexicanos (13.7%). Born and raised in black Harlem, Mr. Sowell contends that disparities between ethnic groups have more to do with cultural values, family structures, and individual choices than discrimination. A proof point of Mr. Sowell's thesis is the fact that the dynamic and hard-working American Latinos, who represent 19% of the US population, generate a whopping 39% of the growth in US real GDP. ¡Viva los Latinos!
Our editorial view is we do not put people into boxes based on skin tone, sexual preference or fetish (none of our business), or other fashionable, now outdated, political labels. We do confess a bias toward women and, for example, feel strongly that they should not have to contend with biological men in competitive sports or their safe spaces, such as bathrooms and changing rooms. We also believe that the world would be a better and more peaceful place if women were in charge. Don't you?
To quote Prince William, 'We are very much not a racist family.' We are who we believe we are—the most democratic, free, tolerant, optimistic, economically prosperous, innovative, generous, demographically diverse (and arrogant 😎🤙🏼) country in the world. Let’s not let Whitey put us in a box and make us feel different for their political manipulation and gain—because we have the receipts. Let's keep the faith!
—Anthony Perkins, founder & editor of Cryptonite
The Trump Crypto Pump
After a perceived crypto-hostile (ignorant?) Biden administration, we elected a born-again Bitcoin Head President (who once called Bitcoin a 'scam') and have enjoyed a trillion-dollar post-election crypto bump.
Elon Musk purportedly has played a significant role in shaping Mr. Trump's shift towards a more favorable view of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Once convinced, the President-elect went on to raise $7.5 million in crypto campaign contributions, earned an estimated $8 million in licensing fees from Trump-branded NFTs, and now owns up to $5 million in ETH. His son Barron also inspired the creation of a Trump family-backed crypto DeFi startup called World Liberty Financial. So, one might say he is fully invested in the Web3 boom.
The current Biden-appointed SEC Chairman, Gary Gensler, can be credited with approving— however begrudgingly—the first spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for Bitcoin and Ethereum early this year, which turned into some of the top-performing investments for 2024.
Bitcoin ETFs have also attracted approximately $5.8 billion in net inflows since Election Day on November 5, 2024, pushing the year-to-date total to $33.5 billion. Ethereum ETFs experienced record inflows of $533.9 million in the week following the election and have surpassed $100 billion in total assets by hitting $104 billion as of November 21, 2024.
Anticipating the new Administration, Mr. Gensler announced he would be stepping down in January. The Web3 community roundly criticized him over his approach to regulating the crypto industry. Since 2013, the SEC, for better or worse, brought 173 enforcement actions against crypto entities.
One of the higher profile cases included the SEC lawsuit against Ripple Labs in 2020 for successfully raising over $1.3 billion through the sale of its unregistered XRP token. After a prolonged legal battle, a federal judge slapped Ripple with a $125 million penalty (the SEC was seeking $2 billion) and ruled that Ripple's sales of XRP directly to institutional investors violated securities laws, but secondary sales on public exchanges did not. If you can make sense of that decision, let us know. We interpret it as an affirmation that cryptocurrencies are not securities, and we consider it a victory for our team.
The Ripple case, as well as the SEC's ongoing lawsuit against Coinbase, which charges the company with operating as an unregistered securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency, is indicative of the work still to be done. Mr. Trump campaigned to close the cryptocurrency knowledge gap between the entrepreneurial community and the government and to position the US as the 'crypto capital of the planet and the world's superpower of Bitcoin.'
One of the SEC’s current commissioners, Mark Uyeda, is fully backing Trump’s tentative cryptocurrency plan and has emerged as a leading candidate to replace Mr. Gensler. The plan is to amend Mr. Gensler's position that all crypto tokens aside from bitcoin and ether are securities and free our industry from SEC jurisdiction.
Trump Bitcoin 2024 keynote excerpts
"For too long, our government has violated the cardinal rule that every bitcoiner knows by heart: Never sell your bitcoin. My administration policy is for the US to keep 100 percent of all the Bitcoin we currently hold or acquire into the future as the core of a strategic national Bitcoin stockpile."
"On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC Chairman. The rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry.”
"Upon taking office, I will immediately appoint a Bitcoin and crypto Presidential Advisory Council... Their task will be to design transparent regulatory guidance for the benefit of the entire industry."
"We will immediately shut down Operation Choke Point 2.0." [The crypto industry's term for anti-crypto regulatory policy, such as SAB 121, issued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in March of 2022.]
"Bitcoin and crypto will skyrocket like never before, even beyond your expectations. And you are the people that are doing it."
"Bitcoin stands for freedom, sovereignty, and independence from government coercion and control. If elected, we will transform the US into the crypto capital of the planet and the world's superpower of Bitcoin. If we don't embrace crypto and Bitcoin technology, China will, other countries will, and they will dominate."
Web3 innovation meets the DOGE opportunity
Our long-standing editorial view is that Web3 represents a $20 trillion economic economic opportunity over the next 20 years (10x Web2). With the advent of the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) headed up by Elon and Vivek Ramaswamy, Web3 entrepreneurs could add another $10 trillion to that number.
Here are some bullet points on what Elon and Vivek are looking to address that Web3 entrepreneurs should seize on to help solve.
Cutting red tape. According to a just-released accounting of the paperwork burden under Biden, paperwork requirements attributed to federal regulations — mostly in filing tax documents — cost Americans 10.5 billion hours a year, or enough to consume 14,983 human lifetimes. Cutting this 'red tape tax' could save an estimated $187-$420 billion. A similar report Secrets reported last week put the total paperwork bill to Americans under Biden at $1.8 trillion.
Most legal edicts aren't laws enacted by Congress but 'rules and regulations' promulgated by unelected bureaucrats—tens of thousands of them each year. Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren't made by the democratically elected President or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections. The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long
—Excerpt from Elon & Vivek's November 20, 2024, Wall Street Journal editorial
Reduction of Federal Workforce: The initiative plans to implement "mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy" through various means, including voluntary terminations and early retirement incentives. Elon has a little experience here. 'We laid off 90 percent at Twitter. It turns out that you don't need all that many people to run Twitter. If you're not trying to run some kind of glorified activist organization, and you're not caring that much about censorship, you can really let go of a lot of people,' Elon told Tucker Carlson. For his part, Vivek expresses in his campaign for President that his goal is 'to cut 75% of government overhead.'
Office Space Utilization: DOGE is focusing on the underutilization of federal office space, noting that some agencies are using as little as 6% of their available space. Part of the solution, according to Elon and Vivek, is to mandate that federal employees return to the office for in-person work.
Shuttering Departments. DOGE still hasn't made public which of the US Departments they will recommend shuttering, but Elon pointed out in a recent X post the advice of the late economist Milton Friedman decades ago. Professor Friedman suggested we should abolish the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Education immediately. He also said we should abolish the Department of Energy, except for the parts that deal with nuclear, which should be moved under the Defense. Mr. Friedman also said the Department of Housing and Urban Development should also go, saying it 'had done an enormous amount of harm' to our country.'
The plan for DOGE sounds amazing to us, and it should be something we believe most Americans will be cheering on. This transformation also represents a boon of new opportunities and revenue growth for Web3 companies, as AI, blockchain, digital assets, robotics, and green tech innovation will all make this happen.
Other than improving efficiency, slashing costs, and drawing the nation closer to a balanced budget, if not achieving one, DOGE and Web3 innovators can impact national security as well. Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel warned in a New York Times editorial, 'In 2017 Xi Jinping added the principle of 'civil-military fusion' to the CCP's constitution,' which mandates that all research and intellectual property in China be shared with the People's Liberation Army.
If Web3 companies proactively work with Elon and Vivek, it will draw Silicon Valley and Washington closer together and keep our government on the cutting edge and competitive with the CCP. Closing the innovation knowledge gap between the free market and the government will also spare unnecessary regulation.
There is a lot of money to be made working with DOGE. Let's go get it!
Join us at Silicon Valley '25—Where is Web3 taking the world? —33% off tickets until Jan. 1!
A gathering where entrepreneurs and risk investors share how emerging Web3 innovation will create a new prosperity and address the world’s most pressing issues.
When and Where
—April 9th & 10th (Wednesday & Thursday)
—The Presidio Theatre Performing Arts Center (on the grounds of San Francisco’s Presidio National Park)—99 Moraga Ave., San Francisco, CA
Introducing the Cryptonite 300 competition
Somewhere between the raw startups and the Unicorns are the blockchain, AI, and metaverse companies pioneering Web3 and offering the best equity investment ROI potential in the global Silicon Valley.
What you get behind the ‘paywall’ as a paid Cryptonite member
List and data profiles on 3,500 venture capital-backed AI/ML companies and blockchain/crypto companies, over 240 of which have made the C300 nomination list thus far.
List of the top Venture Capital funds invest in the top 300 private Web3 companies.
List of the top Web3 Influencers as ranked by top deal relationships.
The ability to nominate companies to the Cryptonite 300 competition for 2024!
Invitations to private Cryptonite events.