Many people of note in crypto are people who have learned to hustle and to develop new opportunities as they arise. Daniel’s approach to the space has consisted of literature review and being open to learning new things, and I was interested to hear his thoughts on regulation. Surprisingly, he wasn’t worried about it at all. The Trump administration seems to lack fangs necessary to do real damage to the crypto space and the Biden administration’s leanings are decidedly bullish.
The calm with which Daniel communicates these thoughts is characteristic of a CEO, which I’ve previously argued could be taken to mean “cheerleading” executive officer due to the basic fact of human nature that people with a goal who feel themselves to be part of the team tend to perform their duties more effectively. Being a good leader means being a good cheerleader. Despite my impulse to look beyond any overzealous optimism on Daniel’s part, I found that his reasoning makes sense. He’s confident in the incoming administration to regulate cryptocurrencies intelligently and he’s able to easily point to supporting evidence for his position.
I pushed a bit further on the regulation issue just to make sure, but Daniel held firm. “Not all regulation is bad,” he said. I waited a beat, and he followed up with “Good regulations will help the markets grow. You just gotta be smart about how you regulate.” I indicated my assent. “If it’s smart it makes things better.” Daniel’s thesis is simple: we need smart regulations, so it is good that the incoming administration has people experienced in crypto being named to top positions in it.
Not all regulation is bad. Good regulations will help the markets grow. You just gotta be smart about how you regulate. If it’s smart it makes things better.
?—?Daniel Gouldman
I directed the conversation from here to the bill Maxine Waters was getting attention for and Daniel surprised me again by knowing that the issue at stake was digital money without a public blockchain, then describing this as an opportunity for improvement. I agreed with his assessment of this too, and we moved on to briefly touch on the idea that people, not banks, need to be in control of money. Trustless interactions put the control into the hands of the people who are interacting, which can even allow them to capture value that was previously unavailable.
Though we spoke before the announcement of the SEC lawsuit against Ripple, Daniel was bearish on the cryptocurrency. He referred to it as a B2B version of what Blockcard is doing for consumers and said that he expected it not to work. “Crypto banking is all there will be in the future,” he said, explaining that XRP was unnecessary to the project of bringing cheap transactions to institutional players.
Crypto banking is all there will be in the future.
?—?Daniel Gouldman
The importance of TERN’s eventual achievement of scarcity to the stability of the TERN price and hence the stability of the Blockcard ecosystem did not escape Daniel’s notice even as he declined to speak directly of the token price. He did not speak to the price, but my thinking in being bullish on it is simple enough: it doesn’t go down too far and it has a lot of room to move upward as adoption increases. Still, the point for Daniel is to change the way people spend money, not to profit from a pump and dump operation.
We spoke a bit about Yuval Noah Harrari and about Keynsian economics. Then Daniel made the surprising statement that Bitcoin was already functioning incredibly well as an inflation hedge with stable and rapid growth. I asked him what the perfect monetary system would be and he replied that we were very close to it, that people just needed better financial tools to use and the current economy would be able to provide for everyone’s needs. I’m paraphrasing that because I was too excited that he was saying it to write down a direct quote.
I always enjoy speaking with Daniel, and am still looking into Brian Brooks at his recommendation. I asked his opinion about the short, mid, and long-term price action of Bitcoin and it’s already outperformed his short-term estimate. Personally, I’m elated that it appears to be on the cusp of outperforming his 6-month estimate of $25,000-$30,000 by the end of the year somehow as well, but we agree on the long-term idea that the sky is the limit there.
If you'd like to try out the Blockcard platform, feel free to use my referral link here.
Originally published at Voice.com.
