WBD012 Audio Transcription
Trading Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies with Josh Olszewicz
Interview date: Friday 13th April
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Josh Olszewicz. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.
I met with Josh on my recent trip to Washington and had the chance to talk to him about the market conditions, his approach to trading and why he believes in Bitcoin.
“If everything has sold off 70% or more, the risk/reward of going long instead of short here is much higher at this point than it was 2 weeks ago.”
— Josh Olszewicz
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: Hi, Josh. We got here today, finally.
Josh Olszewicz: We did.
Peter McCormack: Thank you so much for sparing time with me. So, we've had quite a depressed crypto market for the last --
Josh Olszewicz: Don't use that, don't use the word "depressed". That puts a connotation on it. I mean, if you're bearish you love this market.
Peter McCormack: Yes, because I'm not bearish and I'm never sure; it's just depressed for me. But you changed your name on Twitter to @33kbyjuly.
Josh Olszewicz: I did.
Peter McCormack: So, are we going to hit $33,000 by July? What's the background to this?
Josh Olszewicz: Sure, let me explain it first for people who probably are unaware. Yes, so everyone always asks me, just because I'm super public about where I think things are going, "What's the target? When?" So, I thought, "Let's just cut that off at the pass. Let's make my handle literally 33kbyjuly and people will know where I stand". So, this happened pre-January which was 33k and then it broke basically a technical level to the point where it clearly wasn't going to happen before January 2018. So then I thought there's another chance for that, based on technicals, to hit by July.
So, it's still possible, as unlikely as it may feel at the moment, sitting here today with Bitcoin at less than $7,000, I think.
Peter McCormack: Yes, again like last year when Bitcoin was $1,000, $20,000 looked unlikely.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, I agree. It's a little different now; there's so many things going on. I think people discount or discredit the tax issue. Yes, it's the worldwide thing as far as Bitcoin and taxes, mainly just Americans are dealing with that right now, but everybody's doing the taxes to some degree.
Peter McCormack: For other people who don't understand, who aren't based in America, is this a one-time-a-year tax thing, it happens once a year in one go?
Josh Olszewicz: Correct, yes.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Josh Olszewicz: You basically have to declare all your capital gains, which is what these are, and for many people, including myself, this is the first time we're declaring a very large amount based on last year's trading.
Peter McCormack: Right, so you think that's a contributing factor; people are declaring their taxes, having to pay so they're having to liquidate?
Josh Olszewicz: If I'm talking about myself and I haven't calculated my taxes yet, but that's coming up, if I owe a certain amount of money, for example, $20,000 to $50,000, I don't have that in my bank account.
Peter McCormack: Of course not.
Josh Olszewicz: Everything I own is in crypto, so what do I have to do to pay that? I have to sell crypto and that causes an increase in supply, decrease in demand and just a general broad sense that that's, in some degree, contributing to this; it's not the sole factor but…
Peter McCormack: What else do you think is contributing to this?
Josh Olszewicz: Before the run up to this, it was on the cards that this whole quarter was going to be a down quarter. This quarter generally, over the past three years, the first quarter of the year has just been a down quarter. Last year it was China banning everything, if everybody remembers that or not.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Josh Olszewicz: That caused a huge spike down. You're right, at that time if you had told me that in January we'd hit $20,000, I'd say you're full of crap. But it still happened.
Peter McCormack: I remember actually because when I first started, I remember when we hit $1,000 and I set up a little Facebook group for my friends just to show them. And I screen-shotted -- I'll show you afterwards -- and I said, "I think we might even hit $2,000 this year".
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, it was crazy how fast things happened towards the end, which even retrospectively and even when it was happening, many of us were talking about it. That's just how market cycles work; they're very slow, they ramp and then they get really quick, and then you get euphoria or panic and then it's over; which is why now, when we're seeing selling getting quicker and quicker and quicker, that's ideal for the situation to reverse because people panic, they capitulate, they sell everything, they say, "All right, I'm done. This is enough, I've lost enough", people who got in early 2018, for example. And in general you're supposed to buy at the bottom, sell at the top. Most people do the opposite; they buy at the top, sell at the bottom.
So, all those things contribute to what is typically seen as panic-sized volumes on the chart, but that's really what I'm watching and hoping for, because it's a clear sign. What we saw yesterday with OKCoin --
Peter McCormack: Yeah, didn't they have some guy threatening to commit suicide in front of the office?
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, that's the second time he's done that based on what they said on Twitter.
Peter McCormack: Right.
Josh Olszewicz: I'm not blaming OKCoin, but people who are well aware of the situation. Yeah, so basically on that futures exchange, they have a band around the price and when price breaks that band, it's an invisible band, but when it breaks that, it goes haywire and that's essentially what happened. So yeah, they had to roll back all those trades.
Peter McCormack: So, you think we're in panic mode now, we're almost having the opposite to December? It's almost like everything's an average, if you draw an average line through it, we're going to have a huge spike.
Josh Olszewicz: Sure.
Peter McCormack: We're going to have the huge panic.
Josh Olszewicz: Yes, exactly. It's always easier if it's super extreme. Even December and January, it wasn't that extreme which is why I didn't discount it mainly as the top of everything; we didn't see this giant, euphoric thing that I thought we'd see. Looking back on it even, it's not very clear.
But February, we saw this massive dump, which in retrospect was related to a Mt. Gox creditor selling. Again, not solely his fault, but definitely a large contributing factor. When you look at the churn of the volume there, it's just massive. The highest volume ever seen was that day, so that's a really good sign that there's a reversal of momentum in any sense.
Peter McCormack: Where are you plotting the bottom on this, where are you thinking?
Josh Olszewicz: The bottom currently? If you're looking at things like Ethereum, they have a whole other set of factors. Again, it comes back to market participants, who's buying what, when; who's doing what ICOs what, when; what are these ICOs doing with the funds after they collect them, most of which are still holding, which is a good sign for Ethereum; but again, if we want to reach those capitulatory level of volumes, everybody has their price. If a certain ICO says, "All right, we're at $200, we raised X amount of money, we've lost three-quarters of that", what's the preservation of capital that we're going to say here's the hard line in the sand, we're just going to sell everything?
Peter McCormack: I think I saw Ari Paul put out something today about treasury management, saying how much should you convert into dollar. I think it was him and he was saying you should convert 100% of it and if you're not going to, then do 50%, but that 50%'s a gamble because you pay for pretty much everything in USD.
Josh Olszewicz: Sure, I can go on about trading forever.
Peter McCormack: Well, you didn't give me an answer where you see the bottom! Do you know one thing I've noticed in my own amateurish trading and also another thing I'd add is that, obviously I thought I was a genius most of last year and then realised I really don't know a lot. I think you have to almost go through a full market cycle to really start to understand and see the signals. But one thing I've noticed over the last week, maybe ten days, is just simple a thing on Blockfolio, whilst Bitcoin keeps dropping, the value of my portfolio on Bitcoin has stayed about the same.
So, what I've noticed is a lot of the altcoins, I hold maybe 15, they feel like they've hit a bottom, and different ones are pumping each day up and down, up and down, almost like an accumulation period because there's such low liquidity. I'll give you an example, it might be NEBL or AION, it will go up 15%, drop 15%, up 15% and my assumption there is this is accumulation, because you can't buy significant amounts of that. So, I'm feeling personally we've hit a bottom on the alts, but I'm just not sure on the Bitcoin.
Josh Olszewicz: So, Bitcoin isn't dropping in USD value and alts are static, so the BTC is still losing USD value.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, yeah.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, I don't know how to really tackle that specifically but I agree, it would be some sort of accumulation you'd think. If people aren't continuing to sell alts for Bitcoin, which to some degree you shouldn't be in my opinion, not that this is financial advice, but if everything is sold off 70% or more, in Ethereum's case it sold off 100% of that entire move after breaking that consolidation zone. The risk reward of going long instead of short here and buying instead of selling is much higher at this point than it was a week ago, two weeks ago. So, yeah.
Peter McCormack: It's really hard though as well. I'm one of those people that get sucked into Twitter and you see the different opinions. I even had a conversation with a friend today on text, my friend Tom, and we were both saying, "God it feels like I just want to sell everything now" and agreed.
Josh Olszewicz: That's good.
Peter McCormack: That probably means it's going to go up tomorrow, but then also I saw a couple of posts. Chris Burniske put out a post today, Kal Somani put out a post today and people are saying, "Yeah, something's dropped 70% but it can still drop another 50% from here".
Josh Olszewicz: Sure.
Peter McCormack: It does fill you with fear, but I guess there's no point selling now.
Josh Olszewicz: My thing was if you didn't sell at $14,000 to $10,000, what's the point of selling now? If you think it's going to go to $3,000 or half from here, go for it, which it obviously could; there's nothing stopping it from doing that. Yeah, I've sold what I want to sell and I'm done in my own funds.
Peter McCormack: You're ready for the taxes, to pay your tax; you're all good there?
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Peter McCormack: So, you've built up quite a solid reputation on Twitter.
Josh Olszewicz: Which is a bit weird, but yeah I have.
Peter McCormack: What is that? I know you're not hugely aware of my podcasts. I've only been in the space for about a year, but you're one of the people that first comes up, you become aware of quite early on, and you've got nearly 100,000 followers?
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Do you have a background in trading or are you one of these people who's just learned to trade cryptos?
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, so my background's entirely biology, medicine, biotechnology.
Peter McCormack: I saw your LinkedIn and I saw you currently have a role. Is that a full-time role or have you just not updated your LinkedIn?
Josh Olszewicz: You mean in Johns Hopkins?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Josh Olszewicz: It's less than part time and my whole life has been an inability to leave things, so the job I had before that I was there for too long. These are all great people, which is a good and a bad thing, I don't want to leave these relationships, and I think with Hopkins it's the same thing. That's less than five hours a week almost.
Peter McCormack: So, crypto's your thing then full time?
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, crypto. Right, exactly.
Peter McCormack: But have you traded any other markets?
Josh Olszewicz: No, no.
Peter McCormack: You just learned, you just cut it in the crypto game.
Josh Olszewicz: Right.
Peter McCormack: So, when did you start and, the standard question, when did you first discover Bitcoin, when did you first start trading?
Josh Olszewicz: My big thing was I trying to get into medicine for years. I graduated college, didn't get in right away, had to figure out what I'm doing, got a job in a lab and there I worked for a doctor for four years. I had all this student debt, trying to figure out how I'm going to pay this off, while at the same time trying to go to medical school.
So, I had this mutual fund, something like $10,000, that wasn't really doing anything at the time and I thought, "Okay, I should probably do something with this". I was looking at Vanguard funds at the time which is not an ETF; what is it? I'm blanking on the type of fund; not a mutual fund but…?
Peter McCormack: You're asking somebody who wouldn't know.
Josh Olszewicz: Anyway, Vanguard funds, people know what they are.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Josh Olszewicz: So, it was either that, and at the same time I'd come across Bitcoin even before that, so this was 2015 at this point, but on Slashdot there are some articles about Bitcoin every once in a while. So, I had heard of it and had been aware of it, initially discounting it thinking, "No one's going to buy that, it's a joke". Then one of my other friends started talking to me about crypto. He's this silver bug, he was super into Litecoin at the time, so I just decided to go all in. In 2013 it was $500 at the time, this was around the…
Peter McCormack: Just pre-Mt. Gox.
Josh Olszewicz: So, pre-Mt. Gox. It was around the regulatory hearing of Congress in the United States, which was part of the whole run-up. Yes, there was the Willy Bot which perpetuated this constant buying motion, but in the US a lot of us saw the regulatory hearing as a sign of approval from the government that this wasn't just all scammers and people buying drugs on Silk Road, things like that.
Peter McCormack: Although we have just found out now from Snowden that the NSA were tracking Bitcoin users at the time, which is quite interesting.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, because it's easy to do.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Josh Olszewicz: That's a misnomer; people think it's anonymous. It's definitely not anonymous.
Peter McCormack: It's definitely not anonymous.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, that's when I started buying and for some reason, like most of us do, we go down a rabbit hole of, "What the hell is this thing?"
Peter McCormack: Which we all do.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, and I'm sending money to San Francisco Coinbase, which at the time in 2012 was, "What the hell am I doing?" but it was either that or go to Walgreens and talk on this red phone to some exchange on Bitstamp probably at the time.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, yeah.
Josh Olszewicz: Anyway, that's how I got started and then I found the trading community, which was 20 people at the time, and it just sucked me in.
Peter McCormack: Who was about in those days that is out there now? I know all the names, but who did you build relationships with early on?
Josh Olszewicz: There was Whaleclub was the first social thing, so it was on TeamSpeak. The big thing about trading is you're generally just by yourself, so it was good to bounce things off other people, especially if you don't know what the hell you're doing. At the time, it was all about sharing with as many people as you could who knew something more than you did; I think that's just anybody in general. You're trying to learn something, be immersed in it and be immersed in the language, the visuals, everything. So, people like Flipper, people like BTCVIX, people like Bonavest who's come back now after losing all his money.
Peter McCormack: I was going to say I don't know any of these names. Are you one of the only survivors?
Josh Olszewicz: They survived, but then there's other people who haven't. I'm definitely in a minority, I think, of people who survived since 2012 onward, but if you can survive a bear market, I think you can survive anything!
Peter McCormack: You went through the rise at the end of 2013.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: You experienced probably similar to what we're experiencing now, Mt. Gox, crash, but you didn't get wiped out.
Josh Olszewicz: No.
Peter McCormack: What was it like trading through those times then, and what did you learn from then that is relevant now?
Josh Olszewicz: I was somewhat smart enough to realise most people are really bad at trading and most people shouldn't be trading. I was able to keep enough money aside, so even today I only trade 25% of what I own on a daily basis for the most part, which most people do the opposite; they go to high leverage, they trade everything, they lose everything really quick; most people in three weeks generally, three to four weeks, they just lose everything.
So, I was able to survive that because I believe in technology, I believe in the fundamentals, I was watching Andreas Antonopoulos on YouTube, just falling asleep to this stuff, seriously drinking the Kool-Aid, you know.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, I just DCA'd all the way down, so dollar cost averaged, just buying a little bit at a time just based on my ability with the funds I had at the time to buy, paycheque to pay cheque basically.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so you experienced that, it depressed down until about 2015.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: At what point for you in your training did this become something you realised it was going to be a full-time job and pay your life, because you wouldn't have been making money in 2014 really or you would have struggled, right; not like, say, over the last 18 months?
Josh Olszewicz: Sure. If you can trade both sides of the book, which is long and short or whatever, you can make lots of money.
Peter McCormack: Were you trading both sides of the book then?
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Okay. You've obviously done very well, and I've spoken to a few people and your name always comes up as one of the most respected traders. There's a lot of traders out there who have built a following I don't believe are good traders, I don't like their calls. I've been through yours; I've been through your videos; I've followed you for a long time. What is it about you or your personality that you think makes you a solid trader or what is it you've learned, what are the key things?
Josh Olszewicz: For anybody looking to people on social media trying to become something, I think the first thing, the first mistake a lot of people make is instead of shutting up and listening, they're trying to become this influencer that they're not, this thought-leader that they're not. I virtually did nothing on social media for two or three years and now I've just started. I got this from Gary Vee, but instead of just trying to create something, just document what you're doing. That's all I'm doing constantly every day even on Twitter and YouTube still.
So, I think just my ability to take in information and look at complex systems, be able to critically think, "What's going on here? How do I apply a knowledge set?" I don't know, people like me for some reason; honestly, I don't really know!
Peter McCormack: You seem like a really nice guy as well, as people say.
Josh Olszewicz: Thank you.
Peter McCormack: You're like a big smile since we've got here.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, I'll meet anybody, which is probably not a smart thing to do.
Peter McCormack: Well, I'm not here to murder you.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, that's good.
Peter McCormack: Devs was the test.
Josh Olszewicz: I don't really know. Trading's definitely not for everybody. I'm really even-keel emotionally too, which I hate talking about the psychology and emotions behind things, especially initially when I got into trading. I was, "I'm here to trade, I'm not here to talk about therapy and whatever", but that's a huge part of trading, is emotions and psychology and dealing with that, definitely.
Peter McCormack: I would say I've pretty much kept my emotions intact with it until about the last two weeks; the last two weeks I've found a real test. So, I've been through some of your videos and they're pretty good. You said most people shouldn't be traders.
Josh Olszewicz: Sure.
Peter McCormack: Luke, my very first interview, said, "Most people shouldn't be traders, most should just buy some Ethereum, Bitcoin and just sit on it". The problem is you get sucked in.
Josh Olszewicz: That's right, you do.
Peter McCormack: And everyone wants to be a trader.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: So, there is a lot to learn. I'm going to ask you a few questions: firstly, TA/FA, where's the balance for you?
Josh Olszewicz: In general, fundamental analysis tells you what to buy; TA, technical analysis, tells you when to buy. That's just the stereotypical cliché thing people say.
Peter McCormack: I've never heard it said like that, which is great.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, so I wouldn't even be in this space if it wasn't for a technology, which is the ability to transfer money anywhere you want in the world that's virtually free at any time of day. Being in crypto and then going into the real world and trying to do stuff, it's, "Why isn't this on blockchain yet?" Any time you go to local government, try to do something, get something done, it's, "Why do I have to come to a physical location to do certain things?" It doesn't make any sense.
So, I just saw this huge potential for that. I have a zero financial background, as we discussed, so it wasn't like I thought I'd become a millionaire or anything. It was just this is a cool thing that's new and it was super interesting, different than anything I've done in my background. So, fundamentally it was looking good. Sorry, what were we talking about?
Peter McCormack: FA or TA.
Josh Olszewicz: FA or TA, yeah. So, I hate talking about FA, because I'm not very good at it I feel. So, I write for Brave New Coin.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I've read some of your articles.
Josh Olszewicz: Most people like FA, fundamental analysis, versus TA, because some people see TA as tealeaf reading, which is fine; I'm not here to argue that. But most people like to read the FA over TA, so I write FA as well as the TA, but for me it's dull. I'm in it and I get it, so I don't know. For me, the TA is much more important.
Peter McCormack: Right, but you use the FA to say whether you're interested in a product or not?
Josh Olszewicz: Correct, right. It's much more important for ICOs and altcoins, things like that. For me, people call me a Bitcoin maximalist or whatever, that's fine.
Peter McCormack: Are you, because you talk about other coins? I don't see you as a Bitcoin maximalist.
Josh Olszewicz: I'll trade anything with a chart, so I'm not beholden to one thing, but I'm not going to hold Ethereum; I'm going to hold Bitcoin. I definitely believe Bitcoin can weather storms that maybe Ethereum could not.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, if people say, that question, "If you were going to hold something for ten years, what would you hold?" I've still only got two and I always say Bitcoin and Monero.
Josh Olszewicz: Okay.
Peter McCormack: They're the two I like. There's nothing else I could say I would hold for ten years. There's other things I do like. I kind of like Litecoin, I do. I like things about Ethereum, but there's a lot that concerns me about it as well. But Bitcoin is what, the only one you would hold for ten years?
Josh Olszewicz: Probably. My current portfolio is five or six things, but most of them I'm not holding for a long period of time. I'd love to hold Monero in a hardware wallet, but I can't so that's really the rate-limiting factor for me.
Peter McCormack: Did you see Riccardo, Fluffypony, tweeted today a screen shot of a Monero symbol on the Ledger Nano S?
Josh Olszewicz: That's huge.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, huge.
Josh Olszewicz: Like I've talked about elsewhere, just general custody reasons that without a hardware wallet solution, people aren't going to hold it like they hold certain other things. Even at an institutional level, they can't hold certain amounts of capital on exchanges, just period.
Peter McCormack: So, you will only trade things like you can have on a hardware wallet?
Josh Olszewicz: No, I'll trade anything.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay.
Josh Olszewicz: Things I hold have to be hardware wallet-ready, because I'm not going to leave a lot of money on an exchange that I'm going to hold in a hardware wallet, especially with what we've been through.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, okay.
Josh Olszewicz: Gox, Stamp, Bitfinex, just the list goes on and on and on.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and even Binance recently, although they seemed to do a great job of dealing with that.
Josh Olszewicz: That was something else, more of like Bithumb or whatever.
Peter McCormack: But it's more that people are trying to attack all of these.
Josh Olszewicz: Right.
Peter McCormack: They're all at risk, at some element of risk.
Josh Olszewicz: As they should. It's a giant honey pot. I can't blame somebody for trying to hack an exchange. It is what it is; don't hate the player, hate the game in my opinion. If it's a bank that has no security, someone's going to try to rob it, regardless of your moral standing. Yes, it's theft; yes, it's wrong; it's going to happen.
Peter McCormack: Similar just to life, I went up to the gas station earlier and they've got a big glass screen with bullet holes in it, and I guess there's relevant security for relevant things in life.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, yeah.
Peter McCormack: So, FA to choose what to pick; TA when to buy, what to pick.
Josh Olszewicz: Right.
Peter McCormack: I've studied, I've bought books and I've read a lot of books on trading and I still get overwhelmed.
Josh Olszewicz: Sure.
Peter McCormack: There are a lot of indicators. In your world what indicators are you looking at, and if a new investor was coming -- no, we'll come to the new investors in a minute. What are the most important indicators, what are you looking at first and foremost?
Josh Olszewicz: The most important thing for me is that I am as impartial as possible, and in general, that means I'm looking at things on a chart that draw themselves, that are not relying on things like Elliott waves, where it can readjust. Chart patterns work really well most of the time, but they can also be adjusted. So, I try to avoid those as much as possible so far as analysis, analysis. I'm always looking for trends, which is another thing.
This is highly personality-based, which I didn't really know about initially but some people like trading in and out very quickly, scalping, some people like holding for extended periods of time, some people are intraday. It depends on you are, which is weird, but that's just the way it pans out generally. So, for me I like getting in a trend, I like being in an established trend, so I look for indicators and gravitate towards those sorts of things.
Peter McCormack: Such as?
Josh Olszewicz: I've become famous for Ichimoku Cloud; I don't really know how it happened. I didn't like him in a memetic way where people saw me using it and then other people saw other people using it and then I don't know, honestly.
Peter McCormack: Everyone's using it now.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, everybody does use it. I don't have a private group, I don't go out of my way to say, "Follow me, do this", etc, I don't care but a lot of people started using it. So, either it works, or people are able to follow how I explain it or something. There's some connection there that I don't really understand.
Peter McCormack: Is that the first thing you look at then, the Cloud?
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, for me personally it's all about the Cloud. I look at the naked chart, I look at volume and I look at Cloud, because Cloud will tell me the trend. It literally means looking at something at a glance, so it allows you to go for multiple timeframes, multiple coins, stocks, whatever you want to look at, just boom, boom, boom, you can look at it and say, "I've a pretty good idea what's going on here".
Peter McCormack: Because I've looked on Cloud and I've found it quite complex.
Josh Olszewicz: It is.
Peter McCormack: When I started out, you're looking at horizontal support.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, which is another good -- I don't want to discount or discredit those sorts of things. Those are hugely important and very easy to pick up on.
Peter McCormack: Very easy and I've looked at the Cloud and I'm just, "I don't know what's going on here".
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: For a new trader coming in, would you advise they learn the Cloud pretty quickly and are you finding with the Cloud yourself that it is giving you very good information?
Josh Olszewicz: Yes to both.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Josh Olszewicz: The other thing with the Cloud is there are a lot of parts to it, there are a lot of complex things, but once you know what the checklist is as far as entries and exits, once you get it, you get it. It doesn't vacillate as far as what it means, it's very clear cut and dry. Whether or not you apply that yourself and pay attention and listen to what the Cloud is telling you is another story, but that's one of the reasons why I started using it. It gave me a lot of information very quickly and it didn't joke around or mess me up. Cloud is honestly rarely wrong; it's whether or not you trade the Cloud what the Cloud's trying to tell you.
Peter McCormack: Whether you believe it?
Josh Olszewicz: Right, yeah. The drop from $14,000, if it's on top of the Cloud it's bullish, if it's underneath it's bearish. As soon as we dropped to $14,000, it was bearish. We should have sold everything; that's what the Cloud is telling you.
Peter McCormack: Did you?
Josh Olszewicz: No! I did sell some, I did sell some.
Peter McCormack: Why didn't you sell everything if it told you?
Josh Olszewicz: Because at the same time you're battling this holder mindset, which is me. The other thing is I only trade 25%, no more than 50% ever at once. I'm "trading", okay.
Peter McCormack: Do you mean of your capital?
Josh Olszewicz: You have 2,000 Bitcoin; you're trading 25% or 50% of that actively. Most of it is just passive management.
Peter McCormack: When you say 25%, you mean 25% of your crypto?
Josh Olszewicz: Right.
Peter McCormack: Say you had 100 Bitcoin, 25 is to play with and the rest is just sat there for the long term.
Josh Olszewicz: Right.
Peter McCormack: Because in ten years' time, you believe over a long enough timeframe, Bitcoin will be huge.
Josh Olszewicz: Sure. You can say it's a hedge, you can say you're protecting yourself from yourself, you're protecting yourself from drawdown, of bad trading, whatever. That's just my own personal viewpoint, that's the way it is.
Peter McCormack: I understand. Not 25% of, not like USD, it's not like you've got $100,000 and I'm only gambling --
Josh Olszewicz: Gambling?
Peter McCormack: -- I'm only investing 25%, but it feels like a gamble sometimes.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah. Yes, Cloud is very valuable, especially to new people. There's a checklist and once you know XYZ, it's pretty clear. Yes, it's daunting and intimidating initially, I completely agree, which is one of the reasons I was drawn to it because I was, "I don't understand this. What the heck's going on?"
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Josh Olszewicz: Ichimoku Cloud, it's a different language completely.
Peter McCormack: CryptoCred, he has a tutorial on it and is a big fan of it as well.
Josh Olszewicz: That's great you bring him up, because people like him and Ledger Status, both of them learned the Cloud in some respects through me.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay.
Josh Olszewicz: I'm not bragging or owning them; I'm just saying that's good, because in my mind that says people are finding my stuff valuable and useful in some way; they're able to apply it themselves and get real results.
Peter McCormack: It's a real stand-out indicator though; if you're on Twitter you just see these Clouds constantly exist and people constantly showing them, because I did find it scary and also there's different ways to set up the Cloud, right?
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, there is.
Peter McCormack: So, how's yours set up?
Josh Olszewicz: My argument is that it is time-based, so if you look at how Goichi Hosoda, I'm completely butchering his name, his whole theory and background is all about relativity and time and things like that. The way I took it was that it was applied to traditional markets, which are 9 to 5 and not 24/7. Crypto is the first market that I'm aware of that doesn't close, ever. It's never closed.
Peter McCormack: Doesn't the oil market not close but it flips at midnight or something? I thought there was another market.
Josh Olszewicz: You mean in crypto or something else?
Peter McCormack: No, I think oil.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, there are things that aren't open 24/7, but close, almost nothing is open 24/7. I'm sure there's something but I'm just not aware of it. Yeah, a lot of things like forex is open most of the time and it's also closed on the weekend for 72 hours or something, 48 hours.
Peter McCormack: And things close today, because it's Good Friday, right!
Josh Olszewicz: If there's holidays, Christian holidays, things are closed. If there are banking holidays, things are closed. There's banking holidays in different countries so things are closed, yeah; that's not the case in crypto.
Peter McCormack: Okay. So, sorry, to continue, it's time-based?
Josh Olszewicz: In my opinion, it's time-based. So, what I was seeing was that things are lined up better with alternative settings based on what I was looking for. So, honestly with the Cloud, the setting's the least important for most people. As long as you know what it's trying to tell you, it will work. But for me, these specific settings, both forward testing and back testing, so literally trading through it and looking back on it were always better.
Peter McCormack: Is there a liquidity thing? Can you use the Cloud on any crypto, or does it have to have a certain amount of liquidity to make it work?
Josh Olszewicz: For me, liquidity and timeframe are very closely related. So, if something is very high in volume and very liquid, I can go on a much lower timeframe and look at things. But in general, higher timeframes always win, regardless of liquidity. Yes, it will work for anything, but if there's gaps and candles and things, every indicator's going to break down. It's always better if there's things going on, things are happening. It's always looking for a trend, which is the most important thing; if markets are sideways and not moving, it's going to be very noisy, very indifferent as far as what it's trying to tell you, things like that.
Peter McCormack: What's the Cloud telling you about Bitcoin at the moment?
Josh Olszewicz: Since it broke, I think it was $14,000, I'd have to look at the chart, but whatever it was on the Cloud, this is something I should have been listening to more as someone who is literally like the Cloud Pope, Preacher of the Cloud! Since it broke that level, it's all been bearish, everything. So, there's this other thing where price always tries to return to the mean of the movements of the price action.
So, the mean has been very high above Bitcoin for a little while after it dropped very quickly, and then it tested the mean twice and failed. So, that was another huge sign that things are ready to turn south again. When it returns to the mean, it sees it as resistance and then it falls down. That's again something that I could have traded a little better. At the time there was another reversal chart pattern, so there was a huge potential for us to take off and we just didn't.
People think TA is either two things: it's either 100% accurate, or it just tells you that things are going to go up or down; when in reality, it's all a probability and it's all about "if then" statements. So, if things happen, then this is more likely to happen. If this breaks at a certain level, then it's going to do this. So, when I'm looking at these levels, I'm always thinking, "If it breaks this, is this going to happen? If it doesn't, this is going to happen", which sounds like I'm saying it could go either way.
Peter McCormack: But it can go either way.
Josh Olszewicz: Right, but people want a cut and dried answer and so do I. With that kind of science, all I want is black and white. I want evidence and I want a conclusion that's reasonable based on the evidence.
Peter McCormack: But you wouldn't have a market then.
Josh Olszewicz: What do you mean? No, but yeah, right.
Peter McCormack: A market is essentially a game.
Josh Olszewicz: Buyers and sellers coming to an agreement.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and it's a battle.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Not everyone can win and if it was that easy…
Josh Olszewicz: Everybody would be doing it.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, everyone would be doing it. But then if everyone knew what was going to happen, I believe the market would hit equilibrium, there'd be no money to be made.
Josh Olszewicz: Sure.
Peter McCormack: The money to be made is better knowledge or better predictions.
Josh Olszewicz: It doesn't happen in a vacuum, and we were talking FA versus TA; that's the same thing. These outside market events are directly impactful on the market, which is the high reason why I don't trade forex a lot of the time, just because there's all these announcements that I'm aware of that just move the market.
Peter McCormack: But we get that in crypto as well.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, we do, definitely. But I can't really plan for that as well as I can plan for TA.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay. So, if TA's so important, there's 1,500 coins we can trade, do you pretty much sit in a small group that you're happy to trade because you just understand the TA, or are you out hunting for gems and ZRXs and whatever?
Josh Olszewicz: That's a big question. For alts in general, for myself I think that I'm more of an investor, less of a trader, so I'm looking three to six months. I don't care where it goes, I don't care the lows, I don't care if it goes to zero; I'm just going to hold it, I think it's going to do something. Like XRP, I hate XRP, I think XRP is garbage, but at the same time last year, I was holding XRP just waiting for something to happen because it seemed fundamentally something was going to happen. The technicals didn't look great, but fundamentally things were happening and what happened, it exploded, it went to $3.
Peter McCormack: And now it's about 60 cents?
Josh Olszewicz: Something like 52 cents!
Peter McCormack: If it goes under 50, a lot of people are saying, "If XRP goes under 50 cents, that's a buy" and there's people that bought at what, $3.60?
Josh Olszewicz: It can't go below zero, right?
Peter McCormack: Right. But will it come back, that's the thing? If you forget things like Bitconnect, XRP is something that divides people.
Josh Olszewicz: It does; it's very controversial. It's centralised, in my opinion, it's not distributed.
Peter McCormack: It's not a cryptocurrency.
Josh Olszewicz: It's something, I don't know what it is. I wouldn't necessarily call it a cryptocurrency. People are going to disagree with that, obviously.
Peter McCormack: It's a ledger.
Josh Olszewicz: Sure, but you can trade the chart. You don't have to worry about the stuff behind it. Yeah, you need to know, you need to be aware and abreast of the situation and realise what you're getting into.
Peter McCormack: These charts won't trade forever, right, because we're still in this speculative what is crypto, I say it loosely because we're saying XRP isn't crypto. XRP isn't going to every year forever do something.
Josh Olszewicz: It might, it might not. It's not Bitconnect, I know it's not like a Ponzi payment scheme.
Peter McCormack: No.
Josh Olszewicz: It's borderline scammy, but the FX traders love it which is interesting; they trade XRP over Bitcoin as far as I can tell. I think it has a lot to do with integer bias, so it's back and forth around the dollar. People can buy thousands of it at a time or whatever.
Peter McCormack: It regularly comes up when you meet somebody who's very new to crypto, it's almost the first -- I've met a bunch of people doing this podcast, and a common thing I find is, "How did you get into crypto?" and a big surprise to me is people say to me, "Doge, I discovered Doge". I didn't know anything about Doge when I got into crypto. New people coming in, they're "So, I've heard about Ripple, should I buy Ripple?" and I want to say, "No, don't buy it".
In hindsight, I wish I'd bought it last year at 25 cents. I did buy it at something like half a cent, whatever the low price was back in Feb last year, did very well out of it; only put a few hundred pounds in so it didn't make much of a difference. So, would you say XRP's a buy now? What's the buy target for it?
Josh Olszewicz: I would say let it go to wherever it's going to go. I'm not holding any currently. The other thing with XRP back in whatever it was, before it made the run up to $3, there was a lot of chatter in my circles of people saying, "There's this bouncer at a club was asking me about XRP", "This waitress and waiter in London, in Vegas, in Texas" all these people who are not normal market participants. All the while, the chart is showing me clear consolidation ready to move, so to me that was a sign that something was going to happen even beyond just the integer bias, people seeing it on Coin Market Cap, "It's weird, it's less than $1", "Bitcoin's $1,000, it can go somewhere".
Peter McCormack: That's been its genius, it's the most genius thing about it, not from our perspective, from the creator's perspective is, it's seen as cheap and you go on Reddit and say, "Yeah, but this could hit $20,000 like Bitcoin". And you're, "Have you any idea about market caps? Have you any idea what that means?"
Josh Olszewicz: Exactly. Supply, distribution, any of that stuff.
Peter McCormack: But it did go up to $3.60 last year.
Josh Olszewicz: It did.
Peter McCormack: And the same move.
Josh Olszewicz: You could say Bitcoin's the same, but that's supply and demand. It was not in a lot of newsletters that normal people who aren't market participants brought them in. The other thing about XRP, it's not easy to buy. It's not on Coinbase, you have to sign up for an altcoin exchange or get it OTC, over the counter. You can't just go on any street corner and buy it. So, the other thing was I'm seeing all these people trying to buy it and talking about it and they haven't bought in yet, and that was another sign that things are going to happen for XRP.
Peter McCormack: Also, I think everyone expected it to come on Coinbase. It hasn't, but I think everyone expected it to.
Josh Olszewicz: Sure. My hypothesis is that it will end up there eventually.
Peter McCormack: I think they had to. I think it was going to. In my mind, I imagined they pulled it, just because of everything that happened with Bitcoin Cash coming on the lens on insider trading and issues like that. I would guess they planned for it and it didn't happen, and one day it's just going to, out of nowhere, pop and appear.
Josh Olszewicz: I think they clearly planned for a bunch of ERC-20 tokens back in December as well. That's seen as bear market, they pumped the brakes on that a little bit I think, plus the Bitcoin Cash fiasco.
Peter McCormack: Are you buying any ERC-20 tokens expecting them to be on Coinbase? I'll tell you mine first and then you go.
Josh Olszewicz: Okay.
Peter McCormack: I think ZRX.
Josh Olszewicz: Yes.
Peter McCormack: I think BAT, although some people have come back and said no.
Josh Olszewicz: Sure.
Peter McCormack: And I think potentially OMG.
Josh Olszewicz: Okay.
Peter McCormack: They're my three and I own ZRX. I don't have BAT at the moment, I had before. And I don't have OMG. But they're the three I would say. Are you buying anything based on expectation?
Josh Olszewicz: So, back in October, November, I forget when Consensus: Invest in New York was, at that time I was talking about ZRX, because I became aware of who was on the team, who was on the advisor team; it's all just people networking with people. So, there's Linda, who used to be in Coinbase who's now a hedge fund, her husband is the Dev, the Head Dev of ZRX. There's Fred Ehrsam who is also on the advisory board for ZRX and then there's, what's his name? Olaf something something.
Peter McCormack: Carlson-Wee?
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, Carlson-Wee. He was one of the first Coinbase employees. He's since left for a hedge fund, Polychain Capital.
Peter McCormack: Polychain Capital, yeah.
Josh Olszewicz: Who famously has a giant bag of ZRX. So, for those reasons, I think it's definitely going to end up on Coinbase.
Peter McCormack: It's funny though because it's essentially for creating decentralised exchanges, and then it would end up on a centralised exchange. Ironic and kind of, are they hedging their bets there?
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, there's two thoughts on that. Either they're going to list ZRX or they're going to list things that would be listed on ZRX decentralised exchanges. Either way, I was bullish on ZRX before the Coinbase thing, but this is just adding to the evidence because everything we're talking about with the exchange hacks, I think centralised exchanges eventually will have their place.
Peter McCormack: If they can get liquidity.
Josh Olszewicz: Right, right.
Peter McCormack: I listened to an interview with, I can't remember his name, the guy from ZRX. I think it was Laura Shin's podcast.
Josh Olszewicz: Unchained or something?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it was a really good interview with him and they were talking about it. But I'm a holder, so you know.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah. So, you have ZRX, BAT, OMG, all those are fine players. I think we saw movements very clearly when the announcement came out, what people thought was going to be listed.
Peter McCormack: Yeah definitely, but then some of them you've got to look and say, "Would that potentially be considered a security?"
Josh Olszewicz: Security, yeah.
Peter McCormack: And I think OMG survived because it was an airdrop, it wasn't an ICO; am I right in thinking that?
Josh Olszewicz: I wouldn't know.
Peter McCormack: Because that is a risk.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, yeah.
Peter McCormack: If something is considered, like if you didn't do an ICO you're not a security.
Josh Olszewicz: Sure.
Peter McCormack: Funnily enough, I really like the idea of BAT. I like the idea of rewards based on advertising.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, because we're content creators and you're back on what you say is advertising.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. Funnily enough, when I quit advertising, I actually wrote an article, because I used to have an agency, and it was called Online Advertising Doesn't Work. I'll share it with you, you can have a read and tell me what you think. It was essentially my Jerry Maguire moment, but more of a suicide note, and I ended up quitting advertising because most of it doesn't actually fucking work.
God, I think that's the first time I've sworn on my own podcast, but most of it doesn't; it just doesn't work. I was having to go into client meetings and we were lying about stuff, or changing the narrative. So, I really like the idea of BAT. I don't know if I'll ever make enough money from it that it'll be a key income stream.
Josh Olszewicz: Sure.
Peter McCormack: Do you invest in ICOs?
Josh Olszewicz: I have invested in a few.
Peter McCormack: A few.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: What do you think of the ICO market?
Josh Olszewicz: I was a late entrant to altcoins and the same was in respect to ICOs. I wasn't on the Ethereum ICO. I don't know if I'm too risk averse, I don't know, or I'm too much of a Bitcoin maximalist.
Peter McCormack: You're not a Bitcoin maximalist.
Josh Olszewicz: Okay.
Peter McCormack: Because you're buying other things. You either are or you aren't.
Josh Olszewicz: I don't know, I just never saw myself as somebody who would know enough about enough to invest in a project that would go somewhere.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay.
Josh Olszewicz: It turns out it doesn't matter. The things like Tezos, my ability to predict how well a project's going to hit the market, I just felt like I wasn't able to do that if I didn't want to risk money. But it turns out, like I said, it didn't matter; everything went to the moon and I missed the boat on most of those. But I'm not sour about it; I'm happy that people are able to speculate.
I think it's hilarious, especially back to Tezos, what's going on is people have invested all this money and you can't expect people to be motivated when they have billions of dollars and millions of dollars. It's like buying a cow for free, "I have the cow, I have the milk. I don't need to make the cheese; I have everything I need. I can buy more cows with the amount of money I have", if you're an ICO.
So that's a big problem, which is why Vitalik introduced this faucet system, like a DAO/ICO hybrid where you get paid over time, which a lot of ICOs were doing already with the tokens so that they aren't flooding the supply with tokens, but they really need to do that with the Ethereum as well. That way, they're at least motivated to create a product.
Yes, you can create garbage products that go to market and fail, but to never create a product which is what most of these ICOs are, they've just had ideas and they're just doing things.
Peter McCormack: Potentially though, I think the learning exercise of ICOs is going to be very similar to the dotcom. You could raise money very easily early on, we had the crash, most things failed and now it's quite hard; you have to come with a product. I think ICOs are going to struggle to raise money after -- I still think we have a bigger crash coming. I think they'll struggle and, therefore, the ones people will be interested in are the ones who have created a product already. For me, it's just a repeat of what we went through with dotcoms.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, so things I invested in had a product already. I wasn't praying on a hope and a dream that they're going to make something and it's going to succeed. The big thing with all these ICOs is they're trying to create a network effect that is just never going to happen for them to succeed. Yeah, it might be a great idea but they're just not getting the network effect.
Things like EOS, huge red flags on EOS. They're a year-long raise, the fact that they haven't really done anything. Yeah, they have all these devs and commits and whatever. If you're an EOS maximalist you can say whatever you want, but when you're listening to this pitch from Brendan Blumer or whoever, it's like they're saying all these big words, they're saying, "We're going to kill Ethereum, we're going to be faster, better, bigger and whatever", but until you actually do something, I can't take your word for anything. Yes, I can speculate on a chart, but I'm not going to invest just to invest, you know.
Peter McCormack: It's funny, the EOS one, if you look at EOS, TRON, ICON, all of these ones, Tezos, they all are exciting and concerning at the same time. The thing about EOS as the huge raise is it's a huge war chest.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah. Suppose if you're an Ethereum killer and you're holding all this Ethereum, you can advantageously just dump and punish the Ethereum price.
Peter McCormack: There is that.
Josh Olszewicz: There isn't an incentive for that if you're holding a bunch of Ethereum, but if you're trying to pump your own coin and dump on Ethereum it's, "Look at us, we're better".
Peter McCormack: If that's their plan, and that had never crossed my mind, I would have thought they would have sold off some beforehand to be holding USD. But the argument I've heard is that they'll have a huge war chest to bring DEVs onto the EOS platform.
Josh Olszewicz: For sure and if they can poach people from Ethereum, if they're smart, right.
Peter McCormack: Devs build your CryptoKitties on EOS and see what happened.
Josh Olszewicz: Sure.
Peter McCormack: At the same time, I have concerns about Ethereum. It wasn't able to handle CryptoKitties really. What happens when we've got hundreds of dapps as successful as that? It just feels like it's going to be a complete embarrassing failure of 150 billion super computers or whatever it is. Do you ever worry about that?
Josh Olszewicz: For sure, which is why I don't hold a lot of Ethereum!
Peter McCormack: Right, okay. But on the chart, it looks good!
Josh Olszewicz: I can chart it; I can trade it. I can say, "I think it's going to go to wherever", but long-term I'm not a holder of Ethereum like I'm a holder of Bitcoin from a scaling perspective just alone. The CryptoKitties thing is super interesting because it's just like XRP and there's these newsletters on bouncers in LA and Vegas and whatever, it's getting people exposed to cryptocurrencies; so bringing more people into the fold. Yeah, most of them are going to lose money or whatever, but in 2013/14 when I was talking to people about Bitcoin, they were just, "What the hell is that? You're crazy". Now I can go pretty much anywhere and people know something about crypto.
Peter McCormack: Let me ask you something, just going back. You say you trade on charts and you have suspicions about what moves markets. I don't know the answer to this, I have my suspicions, but do you believe the market moves are based on everyone who is buying and selling and what's happening, or do you believe it's based on a few small people moving the market in the cycles they choose?
Josh Olszewicz: There's definitely an invisible hand who's doing something, people with more money than God doing stuff. I don't know if they're involved in altcoins specifically, there's evidence of that.
Peter McCormack: But on Bitcoin?
Josh Olszewicz: Sure. It happens and it'll happen anywhere. The market's not that big and the more down we go, the smaller it gets. If you look at 2015, most of that was arguably a couple of people just pushing price constantly and we are seeing that a little bit now. There's this article somebody wrote, very conspiratorial.
Peter McCormack: The Cartel.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, The Cartel.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, so it scared the crap out of me and then I thought conspiracy. But he's talking, he called a 95% drop at $20,000.
Josh Olszewicz: Anything's possible, right, but it's like sarcasm; sarcasm always have a bit of truth in it and I think these conspiracy theories always have a little bit of truth in them. Like with the Willy Bot thing, people discredited that back in 2013/14 when all that stuff was going down, and the evidence was very clear that was happening.
Peter McCormack: Didn't it just get admitted to or something?
Josh Olszewicz: It was basically this report. The evidence was insurmountable that it was happening.
Peter McCormack: Willy Bot, was it a spoof trader?
Josh Olszewicz: No, it was just buying coins.
Peter McCormack: Wash trading, was it wash trading?
Josh Olszewicz: No, I wouldn't say it was wash trading. I'm the wrong person to ask, but I don't think it was wash trading, I don't think it was spoofing. It was, to some degree, buying Bitcoin with money nobody had, so it was just moving the price. So, whether that was spoofing, I don't think so, but I'm the wrong person to talk about that sort of thing.
Peter McCormack: What did you make of The Cartel article?
Josh Olszewicz: Yes, I feel there's definitely some entity pushing price down and that's beyond my bullish bias, but something's going on. It seems very weird; whether it's people selling for taxes. He showed that one chart where every so often, there's a huge market sell after every pop-up. I don't know, I don't know what's going on. I just try to stay objective and trade the chart, but the other part of my brain is, maybe there's something to that, you know.
Peter McCormack: Right, but based on the fact that 75% of your portfolio you're not trading long term, you must be bullish?
Josh Olszewicz: Of course, it's just supply and demand. There's 20 million people signed up for Coinbase or something?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and if they all wanted one Bitcoin, that's not enough.
Josh Olszewicz: That's like Kool-Aid drinking to that point but yeah, exactly. All these people have to buy something at some price, whether it's an ICO, or not an ICO but a token on Coinbase, whatever it is.
Peter McCormack: When other people are worrying and even me, in for 14, 15 months, are you not worried because you know it's just a cycle, it's going to go back up; you just have no worries?
Josh Olszewicz: Sure. In four years, we might be at $10,000, but just like sitting through 2014/15, I wasn't concerned. I've never been as fundamentally bullish about Bitcoin as I am now based on things like the Lightning Network, scalability, privacy which is coming, which has been neglected these past years.
Peter McCormack: That's quite interesting, because I saw a post on Medium, you might have seen the same post; it was things coming up on Bitcoin, sidechains, drivechains.
Josh Olszewicz: That's a new one for me, but sure.
Peter McCormack: I hope I haven't made that up.
Josh Olszewicz: No, it sounds plausible, I don't know.
Peter McCormack: But I saw on that also privacy, and it looked like it might be optional privacy a bit like Zcash. I'm not saying the implementation is the same.
Josh Olszewicz: Sure, yes.
Peter McCormack: Are we talking about private transactions here, untraceable transactions?
Josh Olszewicz: Right, yeah. I don't really know the specific differences off the top of my head but there's confidential transactions, CT, and there's private transactions. For me, Monero is more of a confidential transactions thing.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Josh Olszewicz: I don't know if it's hard-line, private versus confidential, if you can be private and confidential, I don't know. But ring signatures like Monero, that's the solution. I'm super bullish on Monero, I just can't hold it out of a hardware wallet, so I'm not going to hold it.
Peter McCormack: Very soon you can.
Josh Olszewicz: Yes, privacy is super important, privacy is undermined -- not undermined but people just don't understand how important I think it is and it's coming around very quickly how important that's going to be. But there's things like Zcash, I'm so anti-zcash because there's no such thing like optional privacy.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and I listened to the interview with Zooko on Laura Shin's Unchained and she challenged him on some key issues and he didn't have a strong answer.
Josh Olszewicz: No.
Peter McCormack: She explained it's like a sudoku puzzle in that you've got little bits of information.
Josh Olszewicz: zk-SNARKs basically or zero-knowledge proofs.
Peter McCormack: I guess a thing about privacy with Bitcoin that I don't know if it concerns me, but when people talk about the next coin to go on Coinbase, in my head it will never be Monero because of KYC issues.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: But if Bitcoin introduces private transactions, then how is that any different? Is that going to put us into a whole new crappy regulatory space or are we just going to say, "Well, Bitcoin can do it because it's Bitcoin, but nobody else can".
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, there's this theory that Coinbase is going to list whatever they can list, so if Bitcoin starts deviating from that, they're just going to not accept that thing, whatever that is. So, if Bitcoin goes in the private direction and they just can't from a regulatory perspective, they just won't. It's like the SegWit2x argument, they'll just fork off, they'll do whatever.
Peter McCormack: So, Bitcoin could come off Coinbase?
Josh Olszewicz: I've said that before and people thought I was crazy.
Peter McCormack: No, as soon as I read that, I was, "Well, Coinbase gets a lot of bad press" and I actually think, "This is a hard job they're doing".
Josh Olszewicz: It is.
Peter McCormack: I think they're doing a pretty great job. I like them.
Josh Olszewicz: They're not great, but they're doing a job!
Peter McCormack: I think they're the biggest exchange in the world in some ways just for users.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, yeah.
Peter McCormack: They have never been hacked, right?
Josh Olszewicz: Not directly, but they've been through replay attack, Ethereum Classic, but they've never been hacked that we know of, that we know of.
Peter McCormack: They clearly care about the law and regulation and following the regulatory process. So, as soon as I heard about privacy on Bitcoin, I was, "Coinbase will just remove it and that would be a very, very bullish scenario for Bitcoin Cash", because suddenly Bitcoin Cash becomes the Bitcoin of Coinbase.
Josh Olszewicz: If they don't decide to go the privacy direction.
Peter McCormack: I almost think they wouldn't though in that case.
Josh Olszewicz: I don't know. Who knows? It'll be the usual.
Peter McCormack: Do you have views on Bitcoin Cash?
Josh Olszewicz: Who doesn't have views on Bitcoin Cash?!
Peter McCormack: What are your views on Bitcoin Cash?
Josh Olszewicz: I think it's all puppet masters, just a complete sham, all of it.
Peter McCormack: Complete sham?
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, just I don't hold any. I sold it at the top when it pumped on some news, I don't know; it was listed on Korean exchanges or something. I don't hold any; I don't plan on it. I definitely have a strong aversion to talking about it, because I don't want to promote it. I don't want to talk about the TA, I don't want to talk about the fundamentals, I don't want to talk about the dev team, nothing but the news.
Peter McCormack: But in terms of scaling then, you have no issue with off-chain scaling? You're obviously a smart guy, so you've probably researched this stuff. Lightning Network is no problem, you don't care about the original whitepaper, all of those arguments.
Josh Olszewicz: The Lightning Network/SegWit thing, I don't understand fully as far as an ability to recall your transactions if the witness is removed, whatever. I don't understand that at a technical level to which a lot of people are going to say, "Oh, you don't know. You can't speak about it intelligently, why should we even care about your opinion?" Whatever, that's fine.
Peter McCormack: At that point, I always have a counterargument. It's, "I don't know how I can phone my son on an iPhone the other side of the planet". I don't know how it works, but I would trade Apple stock. So, that's a weak argument for me.
Josh Olszewicz: Okay.
Peter McCormack: I don't think you have to understand how the blockchain works to trade.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, for sure. But that argument specifically, I feel I should have an intelligent cover point to, but I just don't understand enough.
Peter McCormack: I don't think you need it.
Josh Olszewicz: Okay.
Peter McCormack: But fair enough.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, scaling off-chain is fine, scaling with Lightning Network is fine. It's not owned by Blockstream; there's plenty of evidence to suggest that it isn't. So, I'm not concerned. I'm glad there was a divorce, factions were formed but they split, they went through a war, they had a schism. There was a clean cut relatively but when you're stealing, trying to steal brand, trying to just -- when you have a Bitcoin Cash wallet on Bitcoin.com, are you saying it's Bitcoin? There are issues with that.
Peter McCormack: There is that and also, when you're trying to rebrand Bitcoin.
Josh Olszewicz: Right, yeah.
Peter McCormack: I think one of the questions, if I was ever to meet them and put to them is, "If you don't like it to be called Bcash why are you rebranding Bitcoin as Bitcoin Core? Nobody's ever called it that before". Yeah, I agree with you on those points. We haven't got through hardly any of my questions and we've done our hour and we're pretty good.
Josh Olszewicz: That's okay.
Peter McCormack: Listen, I'll finish with a couple of good questions.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, I can keep on talking. I know podcasts should be an hour, that's the technical.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, we can keep going.
Josh Olszewicz: One quick thing, I want to get back to ICOs.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, go on, shoot.
Josh Olszewicz: For me, I'm always thinking from a biology, evolutionary standpoint, because that's my background. So, I see altcoins as a mutation in the system and there was this mutation and there was this explosion of stuff and then things fell to the wayside that weren't an advantageous mutation for fitness as far as altcoins that did something.
Peter McCormack: Right.
Josh Olszewicz: Once there was an ICO on Omni, whatever it was, whatever the ICO first one was, you can argue that. Colored coins, somebody saw that and thought, "Oh, I can do something with this" and then we got Ethereum, we get ERC-20, etc, and now we're seeing the same thing, another one of these cycles with airdrops and forks, right.
Peter McCormack: Forks, yeah.
Josh Olszewicz: So, the mutation that was ERC-20 hit an impasse which is, "How do we get listed on an exchange? There's a million of us". A brilliant way to do that is just fork or airdrop and then exchanges are more likely to list you. But now there's a million of those, so exchanges are becoming a little less ready to just list anything they want. We're going to keep seeing these evolutions of ways for people to just pre-mine whatever and you get money, so that's just my thoughts on ICOs.
Peter McCormack: Free money.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so a new investor comes into the market, they've missed all the bullshit that we've been through over the last few months, they want to get involved. What advice would you give to someone new coming in right now?
Josh Olszewicz: Try to spend your time learning about the differences between traditional systems and cryptocurrencies. So, back to fundamentals, start there, figure out if you think that fundamentally cryptocurrencies are better or worse than what we have now, and if you see it as a potential for the future. I think that's number one.
Peter McCormack: Do you think they're better?
Josh Olszewicz: I think they're better. That's why I'm here, right.
Peter McCormack: Do you spend crypto?
Josh Olszewicz: I do.
Peter McCormack: Oh, you do! Okay, cool.
Josh Olszewicz: I'm the opposite of a lot of people which are, "I'm going to hold it. I'm never going to spend it", etc, but you make all your money in crypto, you have no choice; you have to spend crypto. I don't have a job really that pays me in USD or fiat.
Peter McCormack: How are you spending crypto, in what kind of ways?
Josh Olszewicz: Sometimes it's directly, so Litecoin, I spent Litecoin to buy those sweaters from that website, those ugly sweaters which is funny. Yeah, so I'll just spend it directly or I'll just cash it on Coinbase and spend it through cash in my bank account. There aren't enough rails directly from Bitcoin to grocery shopping. I can use Gyft for wholefoods or whatever, but if I want to go to certain places I just have to do that.
So yeah, I don't get it. People never spend crypto, hold it forever; it's no, I'm not going to die a holder, I'm going to spend my money. I'm not going to do stupid shit with it, but I'm going to spend it for cost of living, what else am I supposed to do? But I'm not everybody, I understand, that's just the way it is.
Peter McCormack: Why do you prefer it? The experience of spending it, why is that better for you?
Josh Olszewicz: For me, it's like using a credit card or a debit card, it's always a better experience than using cash. I don't have to deal with change, I don't have to worry about theft, I don't have to worry about losing it somewhere, I can keep track of it digitally, mobilely, wherever I am in the world. So, all of that is also crypto; crypto's like a debit card basically. If you leave it on a park bench, someone can steal it. That's just how I see it.
Peter McCormack: Where's the step up? For me, I bought a bunch of DragonMint miners, 110, so it's not a small purchase. I bought them from China, had to buy with Bitcoin. The transaction was confirmed in -- no, sorry I'm thinking of the wrong one. I bought S9s from Bitmain.
Josh Olszewicz: From Bitmain.
Peter McCormack: It was a $100,000 transaction, it was confirmed in eight minutes and the fee was under $1 and I'm like, "That's a fucking use case then". I've got no idea how I would do that with a bank, to China.
Josh Olszewicz: Exactly, exactly.
Peter McCormack: No idea at all. That was a use case. You and I are going to have a beer after this. The experience of paying by crypto, even if they had a crypto terminal, wouldn't be as good as with a card because of the time to confirm; it just wouldn't be as good. So, I've got one use case there that works and one that hasn't. Can you see a scenario where crypto beats every other, every single card? Can you see the cup of coffee working?
Josh Olszewicz: Sure, that's Lightning Network or a network that no one uses so it's cheap and it doesn't need to scale because no one's using it.
Peter McCormack: Do you feel a responsibility to be supporting it by using it?
Josh Olszewicz: I do, I definitely do. I don't know if that's because I've been in it so early. Trying not to dox myself too much, but dealing with real estate people, I was, "Hey, do you want to take some rent/mortgage whatever in cryptocurrency?" I just brought it up just to start the conversation. They weren't super negative about it, they knew about it because they'd researched who I was, my name; they googled me, they know what I do. But again back to 2013/14, nobody wanted to talk about it, everybody thought it was crazy, but that's changing. So yes, I feel a responsibility to spend it, to use it because it's why I'm here, because it is a better experience for me.
Back to the confirmations thing, zero confirmations is a bad idea but I think there are ways around that with Lightning Network that you can do it quickly. I don't know, it's obviously better for bigger transactions like a car or a house, a £100,000 Bitmain S9 miner purchase. So, yeah, things like merch through a website versus stuff, like you said a beer at the bar.
Peter McCormack: I mean, I think the website works if you don't even mind just sitting there just waiting for a second; you can do other things. It is the, "I want to pay and leave and walk away" scenario which I don't think is…
Josh Olszewicz: The other thing is, it doesn't need to be the best thing for everything.
Peter McCormack: No, that's true, that's true. In time, we will get there.
Josh Olszewicz: Yes.
Peter McCormack: I wrote an article and I was saying there was a long time where I ignored the "pay by PayPal" button.
Josh Olszewicz: Pay by?
Peter McCormack: You know, when you're on a website, I just put my card on, I don't know why.
Josh Olszewicz: Sure, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Eventually the experience with PayPal got better and better to the point where it was actually, this is even easier. So, I assume the same will happen with crypto.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Sorry, I interrupted there because I asked you to tell me one thing. So, you said about learning and knowledge.
Josh Olszewicz: For new people.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, for new people. What else?
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, just try and absorb as much as you can, try to avoid politics, which is going to be impossible. I tell new people to spread your seed widely, so invest in a few things that look promising to you after you build this knowledge base. I think Bitcoin has the best network effects; I think it has the best devs in the world. I think it's going places. Yes, Ethereum has more devs, more people experimenting.
I tell people to avoid active day trading if they're new, which is hard, especially if you're in America and you're not used to the exchange rate thing. I think that's another reason why I got sucked in. It was, "I could be making money here if I'm buying and selling". Americans generally aren't really used to that, because it's the dollar and the dollar's just the dollar. America's big and we spend a dollar everywhere; it's not like Europe where even pre-euro or things are fluctuating from country to country.
I would seek out thought leaders who knew stuff, people like Andreas, people like James D'Angelo on YouTube. There's people who can explain the technology clearly to help understand it and that's partly why I started this YouTube thing, it's just giving back to people to help people like me in the beginning, "What the hell's going on here?" Somebody you can trust who's not trying to just take your money.
Peter McCormack: I think everybody should watch everything Andreas has done.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, yeah. The moment he goes to the dark side, which if you don't die a hero, you live to be a villain. It's going to happen eventually but right now the guy, even back for years now he's been just amazing, an amazing resource for the community, definitely.
Peter McCormack: Cool, and I assume your DMs are closed.
Josh Olszewicz: On Twitter, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Josh Olszewicz: They've been closed for a while.
Peter McCormack: How can people follow you?
Josh Olszewicz: Sure. You can always message me on Twitter. I hesitate to say you can message me on Telegram, but you can, it's the same. Call me on Twitter, Brave New Coin, I write articles. I try to write three a week but it's tough. What else do I do? YouTube, I try to do a video at least once a week, that's tough too.
Peter McCormack: Cool. Well, I'll stick this all out in the show notes.
Josh Olszewicz: Sure.
Peter McCormack: Thank you so much. This has been amazing.
Josh Olszewicz: Thank you, man.
Peter McCormack: Really great chat.
Josh Olszewicz: Thank you.
Peter McCormack: Hopefully we'll do it again one time in the future.
Josh Olszewicz: Yeah, definitely.
Peter McCormack: Cool, thank you.
