Blog

Non-Fungible tokens are interesting assets and similar to baseball cards on the blockchain. The idea of having a unique non-fungible and limited asset is intriguing. You cannot duplicate the NFT, and if enough people value it, it becomes valuable. Its theory is similar to Bitcoin only being valuable if people value it. The same applies to NFTs; there is limited supply and if you value it, it becomes valuable. Conversely, there will be no value in an asset if there is unlimited supply regardless of how much you value it. I think the NFT concept is cool but I am not sure if it will work out. I think about who and why there is value in a certain NFT token in the first place, and if the value does come from the asset itself or not. The value of Bitcoin and Litecoin comes from the inside of the coins. It is valuable because the network is secure, and you can easily move value around. Besides, you can send value easily, cheaply, securely, and fast to someone on the side of the world.

I think it's important to understand the long-term implications of cryptocurrency, whether it's a way to change or get countries to think about how the central bank has to figure out an alternative way for current monetary systems; a way to develop a less politically affected monetary system. Thus, I think the way that cryptocurrency is being perceived around the world is also a reflection of how societies are being perceived. Meaning, every country has its own narrative, and due to their differences in their narratives, they are treating cryptocurrencies and blockchains differently.

I have this idea that you design society the way you tax it. You determine the destiny of a society by the way that you tax it; how prosperous or poor the people will be, how free or subordinated people will be, etc. It's not just the amount but also the way that you tax the people. For example, today we rely very heavily on taxing labor even though we didn't always tax labor so much. I think there's a relationship between taxation and freedom. A slave owns none of his own labor like someone in a totalitarian state, but someone in an anarchic state with no government has 100% ownership of his own body and labor. At the moment where 40~50%of our money goes on taxes, so we own about 50~60% of ourselves. This needs to be a lower number.

The last book was called The Biggest Crash of All Times, but the new book is called The Biggest Chance of All Times because every crisis is also a chance. I wanted to give people some perspective and positive things for the future to look forward to. I started thinking about the positive things in this COVID-19 crisis, like what people can achieve, and where the possibilities and opportunities lie in this crisis. I think it is the biggest chance in our lifetime to invest during this crisis because our current monetary system is wholly disordered, and our political system is completely broken. Politicians don’t seem to have any other decisions than to put people in lockdowns. Everything has become corrupt and our system is not human anymore.

Well, technology is deflationary. Technology provides so much efficiency that it creates deflation. If you look at your cellphone or just about anything technology-driven that you use, you get more for less on an exponential scale. That technology is moving into every single part of our world. So, you would expect prices to be falling as a natural by-product of that while saving our time. We should be getting more for less and have our time expanding, but it doesn't feel like that's happening.

IntoTheBlock (ITB) is the result of a macro thesis formulated by our founder and CEO Jesus Rodriguez. Jesus has a long career in technology and finance. Having been a distinguished engineer at Microsoft and later built quant systems for major hedge funds on Wall Street, he has a deep understanding of the intersection of financial markets and tech. His main thesis was (and still is) that crypto products should be intelligent-first products, that is, powered by artificial intelligence. If traditional financial markets are evolving towards AI-first products, why shouldn’t crypto, the first natively digital asset class, do the same?