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I think that on-chain data is something completely new. it's a new kind of exotic data that does not exist in traditional markets. Now we have open ledgers (blockchains) that have millions of recorded transactions. And there's a lot of information and a lot of value in that data with respect to fundamentales and the market. From on-chain data, we can know how to time the cycles of these markets. I think this is something anyone involved in this industry would want to have an eye on. You will get a grip of what is going on under the hood, how network participants and investors are behaving.

I wouldn't say it is “not ethical” to hold your coins, but when people complain saying “ You don’t have skin in the game”, the reality of the matter is that it is my creation and I am tied to the success of Litecoin. Now, if Litecoin succeeds, that is good for me. I don’t need to additionally tie my financial interest in the coin. It actually could be a misalignment of interest for the creator to hold the coin. For example, one could be releasing fake news, and making announcements to pump the price to profit off of. That’s not good for the success of the coin. That said, I don’t think it would be an ethical issue to hold your coin, but it depends on what you do and what your actions are as a coin creator. If you are working on your coin and your goal is to make it successful, the price will follow that.

I consider myself lucky to have a healthy skepticism of authority in general, but I have also read a great variety of books that have sharpened my skeptical mind. I would recommend “The Law'' written by Frederic Bastiat. It's an approximately 60-page book and is a good simple short classic. Bastiat thoroughly decimates the social theories supporting government plunder, and it is very relevant to what we are experiencing in the US today. For example, the US government announced they would print 900 billion dollars and they will send everyone a 600-dollar check for financial aid.

I think Japan has the same challenges macroeconomically as every other country has. It has undergone a very aggressive monetary expansion by the central banks. The Japanese banks own a great deal of the equity but have a lot of the national debt as well. They are expanding the money supply, just like the EU and the US federal government are. The number one & overarching problem in this situation is assets are over-inflated and there is a lack of price discovery in the market. The capital markets have frozen including the markets for bonds, stocks, real estate, etc. All of those asset values are inflated such that the average person cannot work and make enough money to buy them. As the price of all these assets go up, and the wages are flat or going up much slower, it freezes a whole class of people out of being able to buy assets.

Everybody in the world is taught to spell the word “Hope” if they learn English. Thus, the value of a domain is a function of which language it's in. The language that has most business on is English, and the most traffic on the internet is also in English with the dotcom domains. If you own a word that is easy to spell and remember with positive connotations, like Apple, Amazon, etc., it will be very useful. If you own such a word, you can put a business on it. The logic of this is if a billion people see the name and they can remember and spell it, surely, they will be able to type it. If I have a company name that has a difficult name with no positive connotation, people will have a harder time remembering it. Thus, you much rather have it called something simple like “hope” or “wisdom”.

I think that 99.9 % of the people on the planet should be investing. When investing, one should not think about their investment constantly. Investments should be checked a couple of times every year to make sure if re-balancing is needed or not. Investors have become insanely wealthy since the beginning of markets. That is how people accumulate wealth; the way to get rich is through putting away money early. In other words, put away the money you do not need when young, and do not touch it until the last possible moment. I only trade with about only 15 % of my portfolio. I have 70% in investments, 15 % in cash, and 15 % in trading. I think some of the best traders in the world are probably trading with only a small part of their total capital. Nobody should trade with their entire portfolio on a day-to-day basis. If you do, you are guaranteed to lose all your money.

Digital currency in the general sense, cryptocurrency in the general sense, does not solve the problem of inflation and hidden taxes in that way. Bitcoin, in a large way, makes it more predictable, in that it has a predictable low rate of inflation, which is constantly decreasing. But as you say, the problem when we talk about everybody moving to digital currencies, we know the bitcoin network doesn't support throughput. Unfortunately, the bitcoin network, as it exists, does not provide the privacy and protections really necessary for these kinds of transactions at scale.

The single most important feature of Bitcoin is the fact that it is thermodynamically sound. Bitcoin is a closed thermodynamic system with no more than 21 million coins. You can't add or remove coins other than losing them. It's a deflationary system, and all you can do is add energy to it or take energy away from it. So, you can either heat it or cool it down. What is compelling about Bitcoin is that it is the first sound monetary network invented in the history of the world. I view it as a monetary energy network that can collect, store, and channel monetary energy and space over time without power loss. Energy means you could put money in it and hold it for a decade or 100 years. Over space means it's 1:1000 to 1:10 000 of the energy required to move gold or other sources of monetary energy. Therefore, it is a highly efficient monetary network. That's what's compelling.

In the game industry, you have 3 traditional business models for monetization strategy developers use to drive revenue. One is you purchase the full game right away; you buy a game in a box or online and download it to play it without any additional purchase. Thus, you get the full game straight away. That used to be console games you would buy for around 60 dollars. You would play it, finish it, and that was it.

Working for a media platform in the Crypto space has been an interesting experience. I have been with Bitcoin Magazine for 5 years, and we have had some exciting years so far. We have seen a couple of price surges, all the scaling wars, and many phases more. Now, I have also drifted into the role of a historian, becoming a little bit of a Bitcoin historian. Thus, I would say I have changed and grown as a person and a writer. It's nice that I can drift into different types of areas. In that sense, the Bitcoin Magazine team has given me a lot of freedom to follow and write about my interests.