Thoughts on cryptocurrencies for 2018, including prices and investing, people involved, taxes, ICOs and crypto funds, promising applications, and more
@twobitidiot https://medium.com/... Erik Torenberg / @eriktorenberg : “BTC = reserve currency for people that hate the fed; ETH = reserve currency for people that hate the SEC; XMR = reserve currency for people that hate big brother; ” - @twobitidiot https://medium.com/... Ankesh Anand / @ankesh_anand : A level-headed and contrarian perspective from Ryan Selkis (@twobitidiot) on the state of crypto. Brilliant summary and projections inside: https://medium.com/... pic.twitter.com/lZ9AxMPjVj BubbleBuddy / @crypbubblebuddy : Interesting thoughts by @twobitidiot. Below one of the most IMPORTANT points imo. Check it out at https://medium.com/... pic.twitter.com/ekHQ8kjVY6 Wolf_of_Coinbase / @ethereumweekly : “Issuing a token under Reg A+ as a security will be one of the big areas of investment in 2018 and beyond.”—@twobitidiot https://medium.com/... Joe McMackin / @joemcmackin : “Crypto-securities aren't really a thing yet, but they will be massive, and they will actually have measurable fundamental value due to their cash flows or the residual claims they give their holders.” https://medium.com/... Wolf_of_Coinbase / @ethereumweekly : “17) Forks with airdrops will become the preferred alternative to ICOs. You give away free money in order to get people excited about the new and improved project. The only thing they pay is attention. The people who truly buy in become...”—@twobitidiot https://medium.com/... Niels van Egmond / @ncvanegmond : This: “I didn't understand $XRP at $1bn. I really don't understand $XRP at $100bn. It's not required to use Ripple's software, so (..) it doesn't make sense. But the top employees are now billionaires, so that's cool.” Read: https://medium.com/... by @twobitidiot pic.twitter.com/l1UWtrWIBB Crypto Tax / @cryptotaxuk : Agree wholeheartedly with @twobitidiot - rest of his Crypto Theses for 2018 here: https://medium.com/... pic.twitter.com/66beskuvN5 Nichanan Kesonpat / @nichanank : Engaging and thought-provoking post by @twobitidiot. I'm especially interested in how 62) plays out https://medium.com/... pic.twitter.com/aelXtWdihZ Felix Beng / @felixbengt : Im also rooting for @spankchain :) “95 Crypto Theses for 2018”—@twobitidiot https://medium.com/...0-364 ... pic.twitter.com/xi7i3Wh2Y5 Steven D. McKie / @steven_mckie : Thanks for the shoutout @twobitidiot about @SpankChain https://medium.com/... pic.twitter.com/NdLXJzwdqb Rob Majteles / @treehcapital : This entire post from @twobitidiot is even better than everyone who has read it has been saying ... read it. Point 10 below especially caught my attention: http://medium.com/... http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Ryan Selkis' '95 Crypto Theses for 2018' lands at the peak of the mania that Bloomberg would soon frame as a 1999-like bubble — one that crashes but still produces durable companies. Against that backdrop, Selkis is making a contrarian bet on legitimacy: issuing tokens under Reg A+, crypto-securities with measurable fundamental value, and forks-with-airdrops replacing the ICO as the preferred distribution mechanism.
The thesis reads differently in hindsight given the related coverage: Stephen Diehl's argument that tokens let VCs dump investments on an unregulated public and Politico's reporting on SEC resistance to Fidelity-backed Bitcoin ETFs show the regulatory gap Selkis was trying to route around only widened. His XRP critique — software nobody needs to run despite a huge market cap — prefigures the utility-versus-speculation fight that runs through all of it.
First-order effects
- ICO issuers and their investors face a direct challenge to their fundraising template: Selkis argues Reg A+-registered token issuance and airdropped forks will outcompete unregistered ICOs, forcing teams choosing a 2018 launch path to weigh compliance costs against legal exposure.
- XRP holders and Ripple confront a pointed valuation attack from one of the space's most-followed analysts, targeting the disconnect between XRP's market capitalization and the fact that Ripple's software does not require the token.
Second-order effects
- If registered crypto-securities gain traction, exchanges and funds built around unregistered tokens must add disclosure and custody infrastructure or cede the compliant segment — while critics like Diehl supply the SEC with exactly the retail-harm narrative that hardens its stance against vehicles like the Bitcoin ETFs Fidelity was lobbying for.
- Ripple's response to the XRP critique becomes a test case for every protocol whose token trades far above any measurable use, pressuring comparable projects to justify valuations with real usage data.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward a split market structure: one track of regulated, security-law-compliant crypto assets aimed at institutional capital, and another — which Coinbase's blog later projected — of a fully-decentralized, lightly-regulated crypto-to-crypto world, with ideology rather than utility deciding which track each asset occupies.
- Whether crypto-securities ever achieve the fundamental-value anchor Selkis predicted remains genuinely unresolved in this corpus; what is clear is that the legitimacy question he raised in 2018 became the organizing conflict for US crypto policy through the ETF fights and Web3 backlash that followed.
The trend: Crypto market structure is bifurcating between SEC-compliant securities-style issuance chasing institutional legitimacy and an ideologically-driven decentralized track that resists regulation outright.