Save and invest long term and avoid get rich quick schemes.

Trading isn't going to make you rich unless you are the tiny minority that discovers a knack for it with connections for inside knowledge.
Only hold Bitcoin or stables, avoid alt's because they all end up trending to zero.
Set realistic goals.

If you want to move more quickly, become a builder. Find a team and build a business but appreciate that it's hard work and over years and even businesses won't turn you into Elon Musk over night.

Bitcoin is a store of value.

ETH is for paying for gas and speculation, as is SOL.
Most altcoins trend to zero in value and are just ways to raise capital and fund the early stages of projects. Successful long term projects discover ways to earn income over time, most projects fail because they fail to do this and just rely on their own token without appreciating that it's trending to zero.

100% it will.

Bots and agents already make up at least half of all Internet traffic and years ago I read an article about how bots made up over 50% of crypto transactions. At the time I was surprised it wasn't higher.

I believe the trend for AI Agents and Bots will continue upwards and the nature of the Internet itself will change. In decades to come we will look back at todays Internet the same way we look back at old Bulletin Boards and say "we used to use the Internet in such an inefficient way".
I believe we will each have at least one personal AI agent that will assist us in all areas of life, from shopping to paying bills to managing finance to jumping into games as a support player. It'll learn from us on a personal basis and will become an extension of how we navigate the virtual and physical world.

That means AI agents will have spending power, they'll shop for us and book for us and invest for us. Our personal AI agent will find the best savings and investments, book the best holidays at the best prices, so all the mundane day to day stuff. They will write their own bots where it makes sense for them to do so. We won't trawl the Internet ourselves, we'll send our AI Agent to do it. Our window onto the Internet will become a view through our AI Agent, a whole different and more effective experience.

A business in the future will see AI Agents as their customers since it's AI Agents holding the digital wallets and with the buying power. They means websites will focus more on API's than pretty interfaces, it'll transform to an Internet for AI Agents and bots rather than people. The successful businesses of tomorrow will be those businesses that market and reach AI Agents rather than people. Humans might end up as 1% of the Internet traffic, the winners will be those selling to the 99%.

Bitcoin will have a part to play in this, as will other digital currencies. AI Agents buying and holding Bitcoin as part of a savings strategy. Trading it, but also buying other digital assets and currencies.

I wouldn't say it's immortal but it will be the most long lived. Some new better unimagined technology may come along some day, quantum money that doesn't even need a ledger for instance......don't ask my what or how, the point it something better always comes along eventually otherwise we'd still be trading with shells and stones.

I don't see any other cryptocurrency replacing Bitcoin though, they have their own use cases and roads to walk.

Sadly Bitcoin won't be a world currency. That was the original intension and dream but the technology hasn't enabled that so it's pivoted into becoming a digital store of value, digital gold rather than a currency for buying stuff.

I've been disillusioned by the industry, but not by Bitcoin. Bitcoin was born of a vision to decentralise and break centralised control and too big to fail mentalities. A lot of Bitcoins value has been captured by a wealthy elite which is unfortunate, but there are still people in the Bitcoin community who believe in the mission. The same can't be said I don't think for many other digital currencies that have just jumped into bed with banks and regulators in a hope to become as relevant as Bitcoin.

For me the landscape is this.

Bitcoin - Decentralised digital golds, store of value. A lot of value captured by the old money world that could afford to buy up Bitcoin and by a some new money. Still mission led at its heart and is battling the corrupting influences that are plaguing the industry.

Ethereum - Decentralised money, and finance. Some good mission led projects but network is elitist and jumping into bed with regulators and the old money world to get the boost it feels it needs to be bigger than Bitcoin. Even the stake for validators cynically is priced to keep the poor riff raff out.

Solana - Better version of Ethereum, better technology, less confusing, more mission med. Starved of capital still and will either remain Ethereum's smarter little brother or will become the over-achiever in the DeFi family.

If looking for digital money I'd look more towards Solana or Ethereum layer two's but when it comes to mission and long term savings, I don't see anything toppling Bitcoin short of some truly catastrophic effect hitting Bitcoin such as quantum.

Crypto Crusader which is the latest track from Chainz Chief.

https://neonsprawlrecords.com/cryptocrusader.html

What's your favourite crypto related music? For me I have two favourites at the moment.

Bitcoin Baron by YTCracker (https://open.spotify.com/track/3IA0UBjjGmCM9Xu8SzS7hD)
Crypto Hustyle by Chainz Chief (https://neonsprawlrecords.com/cryptohustle.html)

Any other good tracks?

I was wondering, if a new city-state country was formed today in a world of blockchain, web3 and defi and around the principles of this decentralization and inclusion, what might that country look like?
A country that encouraged decentralisation and non-custodial finance, that supported citizen rights to privacy and direct democracy, that made the "state" as small as possible with the state focussing on just what it needs to focus on while channelling governance and wealth towards its citizens.

So I wrote a draft constitution around this idea and some posts on some aspects of such a micro state, such as how state economics might work, how citizens would get directly involved in democratic governance, even how it would encourage family values and responsibility from its citizens. A state that had DAO's for government departments, memecoins for expressing citizen ideas, cryptocurrencies as legal tender, assets on chain etc. Perhaps the most unusual idea is whether a state could be formed that had no taxes but instead, the state operated through direct democracy with a treasury operating more like an investment fund, investing into citizen projects as a shareholder, earning fairly as a shareholder and then using its earnings to fund public services and re-investing into society. Aligning incentives between the state and its citizens with the citizens holding the power.

I'd be interested in peoples feedback and involvement, whether it remains a thought experiment or becomes something more, the worlds first web3 tech based micro-state.

https://medium.com/@Equitoria
https://equitoria.org/

We've just launched Symmetric on the xDai network with scheduled launches on Celo and then Polygon. I won't go into details of the project but I'll include some links for those interested.

The main benefit to users is that since it's running on xDai then the gas fees are much lower if swapping in and out of WBTC.
The issue at the moment is that the WBTC pool is one of the smallest pools, we have to draw in more liquidity to that pool to better support the BTC community.

If you're a liquidity provider looking for a new project and home to support then please check it out.
If you're familiar with the xDai network and want to check it out and provide feedback then please do.

Pools
https://xdai-pools.symmetric.exchange/#/explore

WBTC pool
https://xdai-pools.symmetric.exchange/#/pool/0x64a4579f4ac694fe6816e4fef095a7dfbfae6d1e/

Exchange
https://xdai-pools.symmetric.exchange/#/explore

Project website with links to Medium posts, Discord community, GitHub etc.
https://symmetric.finance/

That's right so my interest is measuring and therefore identifying legitimate projects. I'm looking at this from the perspective of traditional markets, how to filter out the noise and provide a list of projects that wouldn't look out of place on an ESG list.
There's an interesting shift happening on traditional markets where companies as well as being listed by their financial scores are listed by their ESG scores. Funds are increasingly looking at both rankings and choosing investments not only based on financial performance but also on their ESG performance. Why? Well for many reasons including an increasing trend for investors placing money into funds seeking out funds with a social conscience and so its in the interest of large funds to show the ESG rankings of their investments. Also, family offices are also developing a social conscience and seeking out "good" projects.

Bu there's a risk that the crypto space falling far behind the social good of traditional markets which is madness when the heart of Bitcoin originally was to build a better system. When you have banks and equity funds protecting small investors and doing social good while the crypto and defi space just rips people off for quick returns its undermines the good that many hoped for.

So I came into this to look at how we can look beyond lambo's and the Moon and get rich quick schemes that get granny to invest her savings in the latest scam ICO.

If we were to build an ESG index or a set of ESG indexes that ranked quality projects not only by the percentage return but by ESG metrics then what metrics would we use and what projects today would be good contenders?

@hugeblack
I'm not sure it's true that green projects will always get funding, there's plenty of green startups fighting over startup grants, incubator spaces and seed funding.

@Mulann2
I think you're right, health and financial security are very important for everyone. There are subgroups such as disabled people with additional challenges but your two identified areas would apply to everyone.

I’m compiling a funding list for fund managers with an interest in ESG crypto/blockchain projects and I’m interested to learn of the projects/coins you feel deserve the most support and access to funding in the following categories.

Health projects
Green projects
Poverty relief projects
Child welfare projects
Disability projects
Gender equality projects
Shariah compliant projects
Animal welfare projects
Privacy rights projects
Community support projects
AI projects
Cybersecurity projects

Which projects do you feel are the best in any of these categories?

If there are any .NET developers interested in a project I can recommend looking at the Catalyst protocol project.
Website: https://catalystnet.org

Github
The Catalyst organisation on GitHub can be found at https://github.com/catalyst-network
There are 33 projects within the organisation, not all are public yet but some links you may find interesting are below.

https://github.com/catalyst-network/Catalyst is the main Catalyst protocol repository which includes instructions for building and running a node on the test network.
https://catalyst-network.github.io/Catalyst/api/ provides some API documentation for building on top of the network.
https://github.com/catalyst-network/Community/tree/master/governance describes our approach to governance. This is being further populated this month with committee members.
https://github.com/catalyst-network/Community provides more community information.
https://github.com/catalyst-network/Community/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md provides contributor guidelines.

There's also an additional 43 repositories in our Atlas City Github organisation although most are closed source. https://github.com/Atlas3T

Test network
Node explorer at http://catalystexplorer.z33.web.core.windows.net/dashboard/#/
Block explorer at http://catalystexplorer.z33.web.core.windows.net/?network=Node%201

Both of the above are better in dark mode which entails clicking the sun symbol in the top right of each page.

The simplest way to access the test network without building nodes is using the test network web wallet.

http://wallet.catalystnet.org/

Coins on the test network can be obtained from the faucet at catalyst-faucet.herokuapp.com

Other links
YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1lqdhBey7W_GAfb21dTpng
Discord channel: https://[Suspicious link removed]/catalyst-network

We're released a new wallet MVP today on Android and will be on iOS in a few days and so as an MVP it's good to get some initial feedback.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atlas.mobile.wallet

It's a DeFi wallet built on three pillars.

1. Educate. Get people's knowledge up to a safe level. We're building training materials and short courses to get people educated about DeFi such as the terminology, risks, investment types, different coins and services.

2. Support. Get people to complete a personal policy statement so they think through what returns they want to get, their risk appetite, understand the tax implications etc. Build a plan.

3. Provide tools. The Cent app is to be as easy to use as possible and provide the features to invest and manage investments safely. A curated list of services and coins although users can add their own through settings. Build out the features to open up DeFi to a wider audience.

But this is the first MVP so lowest fees (0.5% in the UK for example), core set of features, pen tested and ready to start collecting early feedback as we continue to work on the other features.

From our research, broader adoption of DeFi needs more than just technology. People don't understand DeFi, have trust issues with DeFi which gets caught up in negative crypto news stories and find it difficult to access a range of reputable coins and services.

So our objective is to tackle these issues. Work with regulators, educate, get people to plan their investments, curate what's available but make it broad enough to allow people to manage their investments in one place.

KYC in minutes, bank transfers in hours, debit card payments instantly so reduce the time to get going once the app is installed.
Deposit fees as low as 0.25%.
User controlled transaction fees.
Curated list of crypto but can add 300+ crypto for debit purchases.
Usability features like using an email address and account recovery.

But it's the MVP so personalised education and investment policy statements are in the process of being added. There's a channel for questions in the Catalyst Discord group. https://[Suspicious link removed]/catalyst-network

I will play devils advocate a bit here since there is another side to this to be cautious of.

I do agree that community is important, it helps to validate ideas and feedback new ideas which should lead to a better overall project.
But today, communities are used as a metric for fund raising and so many communities are just fake accounts created because it's an expected metric. I've seen a few really dull sounding projects with thousands of members and very little actual activity or activity clearly from a small number of people running multiple accounts. I would prefer a smaller community of real people than a larger community of fake accounts but since its now a requirement for a project to have thousands of members then we get mostly fake communities.

But I do agree with the value of community and that a good, active community of real contributors is really great to see and brings a lot of value to a project.

I might be unpopular for saying this but I think the crypto winter has been a good thing for the industry because it's raised the bar for projects to succeed which helps to weed out weaker projects.
The trouble is some terrible projects still make it through, never underestimate a big name associated to a project to draw a fan base to part with its money.

But I see signs that we are emerging from the crypto winter and good projects have made it through and we are starting to see some new ideas and applications.
A project I'm working on is Catalyst which I believe is strong although that's a personal opinion (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5167119.msg52403528#msg52403528).
I do see other interesting projects though, it's just finding them in a field of ill thought out ideas but the winter has helped a bit to thin out the worst ideas.

It's not easy to find the right opportunities, I think you have to conduct your own due diligence on projects.
You need to consider the technology, the team, go to market strategy, clients, pretty much everything you would do if you were looking to buy shares in a startup.

Then join their community which might be a small local community or an international community but a word of caution around community. Big communities can be fake communities and should be a warning sign. I've seen the most dull projects boasting of 5,000 Facebook and Telegram members and when I've jumped in to see who might be involved in such a niche community I've found a large community with no activity. I personally would prefer a smaller community of real people than a larger community of fake accounts.

I will list one project as a project to watch and for full transparency I am affiliated with it and so as with all things in this space, do your own due diligence.

Catalyst protocol has been pretty much silent about its plans for a token generation event. There are high quality papers published, the code base is highly advanced in development and will be fully open sourcing over the next several months. But there are already third parties working on the core code base including teams working on core code bases for projects such as Ethereum and IPFS through an early birds program. The public Catalyst network will be run by an independent foundation but the core code base has been developed by the London based technology firm Atlas City Global. Atlas City is focused more on the corporate client market with some very big brands everyone will know well working with Atlas City on environmental and sustainability projects.

So pluses for the project include the following:

- A highly skilled team of engineers, researchers and entrepreneurs. The chairman is highly regarded in the city having formed 3 FTSE 100 companies along with senior management from some of the biggest tech companies in the world such as Facebook and some highly regarded asset managers.
- A professionally engineered original code base, highly modular by design, a high level of code coverage and unit tests
- Some impressive PoC's already in the pipeline for the network
- Around $5 million raised privately to date to fund the project over the past 18 months so this isn't just a couple of people pushing an idea and white paper.

Now the reason I mention this project is the community is small but growing since the last 18 months has been all engineering and partner building but there are now quickly advancing plans to launch the public network with an IEO or other token event. That means there will be opportunities over the coming weeks to pick up tokens for activities such as contributing to engineering or the community as well as the purchasing of tokens early.

Catalyst project
https://catalystnet.org/

Atlas City which will be working on the
http://atlascity.io/

A couple of the social media links for the upcoming network.
https://t.me/CatalystNetOrg
https://twitter.com/catalystNetOrg?lang=en

But do your own due diligence, decide what kind of project you want to be a part of, perhaps it's dApps or wallets or environmental projects or payment rails projects. Then see who's in that space, decide which has the best team, technology and plan, pick two or three out and go with them. There's so many projects out there that you can't evaluate them all so I think it's better to narrow into one sector, dive deeper into that sector and then back two or three good horses.

Libra is good for the industry but boring as a project.

There's nothing in the Libra project that I find particularly exciting or new. But it is showing use cases in business and is adding a level of commercial validation, that there are real businesses and uses for crypto outside of a small crypto community. It's in the newspapers, on TV, people are discussing it. That's all great for the industry I feel. I don't see Libra dominating though, hopefully it will help other more interesting projects to flourish.

I'd also add to that list, ask the question what the ICO is for?

Most ICO's are pure fund raising and the resulting product could run just as well without its own token. Many do make sense beyond fund raising such as a protocol needing an economy or tokenisation of assets but ask yourself what's behind the ICO and whether the token itself is necessary.

- Look at the website. If it's full of typo's or broken features then it doesn't bode well.
- Look at the team. Too many ICO's are run by students with an idea. Look for an experienced team with some history and solid credentials
- Look at their ICO advisors. Many ICO advisory firms have sketchy roots themselves but some have solid histories and backgrounds like Swisscom or C Block Capital. The point is these reputable firms conduct due diligence on the teams, their white papers and their offering and only take on the small minority of solid offerings.
- * Look at their white paper. I've put a star here because actually I don't think this is the best approach for many people. It's like telling someone to read a medical report and decide on the best treatment or engine diagnostics to choose the best car to invest in. It's still worth doing but unless you're a blockchain expert then you may find the white paper only of limited help. I've read 100 page white papers that look slick but have no meaningful content and I've read 20 page white papers that contain the seeds of something great. I think it's better to follow the direction of a solid ICO advisory firm who have the experts to do the deep dives.
- Look at their wider business offering. Do they have clients already or partnerships? Do they have technology developed or is it just an idea and white paper? Leonardo da Vinci designed a flying machine, it doesn't mean he could build it.

Approach it like an IPO, look at the business, the team, the idea and ask all the normal due dilligence questions like who are these people? What have they achieved before? What have they actually built? What does the ICO advisory firm who did the technology deep dive think of the overall offering?

If you do that you'll find that 99% of ICO's go into the waste bin while 1% are good buys.

For full disclosure, I have no association with those ICO advisory firms although I have delt with them and many others and have found them to be highly professional, selective and protective of their own reputations and brands. I do however work for the London based Atlas City which will be running an ICO in early 2019, supported by the leading ICO advisory firms in Switzerland and Hong Kong. The ICO isn't listed yet although if you're interested in the project then it's worth connecting with them to learn about the private ICO period. As a business we've spent months asking that very question, what makes a good ICO for the business and for token buyers and as part of that we've been engaged with different ICO advisory firms, law firms, banks and anyone else we felt could help to test our approach.

https://atlascity.io/
For a bit of background, Atlas City formed from R&D work that started in 2012 under the European Commission in partnership with European water utilities, universities and businesses and which ultimately led to the ground up design and development of a very different kind of blockchain inspired DLT, designed to scale and work securely even when managing critical utility infrastructure.

2018 has seen this work advance including the first MVP deployed as a test network used by partners in industries from supply chain to financial and legal services. Personally I think Atlas City will be one of the biggest ICO's of 2019 since its being planned so methodically and comes with technology already at an advanced stage of development, partnership agreements, corporate client relationships and an active program of workshops, hackathons and meetups. 2019 sees this work expanding as well as media engagement starting with the documentary series Great British Business in partnership with a leading British newspaper and TV networks.

I'm not going to list out the details here since that'll all come with the ICO launch in January and this isn't the place for an ICO presentation but I mention the above to give disclosure of where my views are formed and what I consider to be the right approach to running an ICO. If you are interested in the project then there's a link on the home page of the Atlas City website for anyone who wants to find details for the private ICO period or you can throw me a message and I can forward details to someone to get decks sent out.

If you're based in London then be sure to subscribe to the Twitter account https://twitter.com/AtlasCity_io  which lists out various announcements including the monthly meetup details in Paddington. Also Atlas City engages with local universities and business schools and so if you're looking for an internship or to run some research then it's worth getting in touch as well.

Happy and safe ICOing.

Sounds like it would be a useful app, maybe something that also generates events to alert other apps, email/sms notifications and exports reports in formats such as Excel.