Podcast: The bull case for eCash

Behind the paywall you will find both an audio recording of the episode as well as a full transcript for your reading pleasure.

The bull case for eCash

• This episode I’m going to be sharing why I’m bullish XEC
• But as usual, this is not financial advice and is for entertainment and informational purposes only.
• So after thinking about what I wanted to say on this subject, I concluded that investing ultimately boils down to two things: risk and reward
• Basically, how risky is the investment, and how big are the potential rewards.
• Let’s start with the risk part of this equation.
• Obviously, when you’re investing you want to reduce risk as much as possible. The less risk there is, the more confidence you can have in your investment. Another way of putting it would be you want to remove as much uncertainty as possible.
• For example, when a war breaks out, markets tend to crash, because it introduces a lot of uncertainty into the world and the economy in general, so investors tend to turn skittish and pull money out of markets and into what are seen as safe haven assets like gold or cash.
• You could say the same applies when investing in companies, or cryptocurrencies, for that matter. If there’s a lot of uncertainty about the future of a project, people are likely to pull their money out to avoid getting trapped, which is exactly what we saw happen during the infamous hash war of 2018.
• So the question is how do we reduce uncertainty when investing.
• By doing your own research, of course.
• I remember when I first got into crypto, DYOR was something you heard people say all the time. But the phrase do your own research isn’t something you hear much these days. Back then projects at least pretended to be rooted in fundamentals  by putting out white papers, or roadmaps, but nowadays the only thing people seem to research are contract addresses.
• But not so with XEC. There’s plenty of things you can research in the eCash ecosystem, and lucky for you, I’ve spent the last several years doing that research and have decided to share it with you for the low low price of 1000 XEC.
• Now let’s say you want to invest in a company that’s traded on the New York Stock Exchange. What are the kinds of things that would research to reduce uncertainty and increase investor confidence?
• The first thing I’d research is the product or service itself. This is why people say to invest in what you know. If you haven’t tried the product or service, how can you tell if it’s any good?
• Well, as someone who uses the eCash network every day, I can assure you eCash works great. I know my money is safe and secure, I don’t have to worry about things like 51% attacks, or the network suddenly going offline since it’s a Bitcoin fork which means it uses the same battle tested proof of work consensus mechanism that has secured BTC all these years
• But it’s not just the network. Whether we’re talking about the Cashtab wallet, explorer.e.cash, Electrum ABC, or some of the new applications the XECx token, firma.cash, and of course the new PayButton plugin, they all work flawlessly. I guess you could say I’m a satisfied customer, and if not for eCash, I wouldn’t be able to charge you to listen to this podcast like I am now.
• It’s what I love most about this project, how everything just works, which I’ve found isn’t usually the case when trying out other networks
• Besides the product or service, perhaps the second most important thing I would look at is the team. Is the project led by people actually know what they’re doing, or just a bunch of hobby developers playing status games.
• I can assure you that the team at Bitcoin ABC are the real deal. They are skilled engineers on a real mission with most of the team having been a part of the project from the beginning.
• Another thing I really appreciate about eCash is that if there’s ever a problem, the developers are always there to address the issue. Usually they fix it right away, or if they can’t fix it right away, they will explain why not. It’s been that way since eCash first launched on July 1, 2021. Where other projects tend to ignore you whenever you report an issue, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve mentioned even a small thing only to see it get fixed right away
• Maybe even more important is the fact that the team has a clear vision for the future of the project. They’re not just flailing away trying random strategies hoping to find one that works. They’re focused on a solid roadmap that lays out exactly how they intend to scale and extend the network to fulfill the mission of peer-to-peer electronic cash. As I’ve heard them say many times, there are no known unknowns, meaning they know what they need to do, and it’s just a matter of time and execution.
• The last thing I would say contributes to reducing the amount of uncertainty in eCash is the self-funding mechanism. By using a portion of the block reward to pay the engineers, it provides a more reliable source of funding versus counting on donations or wealthy sponsors. It also aligns the incentives of the developers with the miners and holders so that everyone’s on the same page.
• Without the self-funding mechanism, I’d be a lot more worried about my investment in XEC since the developers would be more likely to give up at anytime.
• In summary, I am confident in my XEC investment because I perceive it as being a lot less risky than some may think. And I’m not just some guy who discovered the eCash project a few weeks ago, or a few months ago, or even a few years ago. I’ve been obsessed with the work of Bitcoin ABC since the Bitcoin Cash days. I’ve seen them struggle, I’ve seen the mistakes they’ve made, and every single time I’ve seen them overcome every challenge that they’ve encountered. I’ve seen the network and the surrounding infrastructure improve by leaps and bounds, and I have no reason to doubt that this team will accomplish the goals they’ve set out for themselves.
• Of course that doesn’t mean that eCash doesn’t come without any risks. There’s no such thing as a riskless investment, but what I am trying to say is that in terms of the network and surrounding infrastructure, the development team, and the incentive structure backing the entire system, I don’t think you will find Another project in all of crypto that you can invest in with greater confidence.
• So if that’s the risk side of the equation, what do I have to say about the potential rewards of my eCash investment?
• I’ve thought about how I want to frame this, and while it would be easy for me to talk about how high I think XEC can go, I’ve decided my goal isn’t to try and create fomo or manufacture hype, I’m not here tell you there’s no second best, because I have no interest in trying to be the Michael Saylor of eCash.
• Like I said at the start, I’m not here to offer financial advice, I’m here to share information, or at least say something people might find interesting, so I’m not going to offer any price targets, or timelines, since that would be pure speculation on my part, but what I can offer is my perspective.
• The way I see it, whether XEC is going to pump or not really comes down to one thing: attention
• If risk is about eliminating uncertainty, reward is all about how much attention you can capture
• So instead of asking if eCash is going to pump, or how high the price can go, the question I asked myself is how can eCash finally capture the market’s attention?
• I’ve come up with three answers, with the first one being the announcement of Avalanche pre-consensus.
• While I admit it’s totally possible that the greater crypto market ignores the launch of pre-consensus just like it mostly ignored the launch of post-consensus and staking rewards, I’m optimistic that this time will be different. For one thing I see pre-consensus as a game changer in a way that post-consensus and staking rewards were not, also the eCash ecosystem has so much more going for it today than it did back in 2022 and 2023, and last but not least, I know that even if the greater crypto market doesn’t care about the launch of Avalanche pre-consensus, I know eCashers will. 
• Once it’s announced, I think it will send a positive signal to anyone who holds XEC that Bitcoin ABC has fulfilled yet another promise as they achieve yet another milestone.
• I can’t tell you when pre-consensus is officially going to be announced, but my gut tells me it’s really close.
• Imagine Binance accepting 0-confirmation deposits for XEC? Imagine other exchanges following suit? To me instant deposits on centralized exchanges is the holy grail of crypto, and if it were to happen on eCash, it would generate a lot of buzz and excitement for the network.
• Which brings us to the second thing that I think could bring a whole lot of attention, and that’s a US exchange listing. I still can’t believe that none of the three major American exchanges have XEC on their platform. Not Coinbase, not Gemini, not Kraken. I believe that if even just one of them lists XEC it would be a huge deal. I know that Coinbase listings haven’t done much for the latest wave of memecoins, but eCash isn’t a memecoin, and if a major US listing were to be combined with the right marketing, it could generate the kind of attention we haven’t seen in crypto in a long time.
• Finally, crypto is all about crypto twitter, and as baffled as I am by the fact that no US exchange has listed XEC, I’m just as baffled that no major crypto influencers or podcasters have discovered the eCash project. 
• The fact that XEC has managed to get this far without even one notable person in this space ever mentioning it on their timeline is a testament to the strength of the development team and our community.
• There’s no way to know if any of these things are going to happen anytime soon, of course, but I’m confident it’s only a matter of time before people start paying attention to the eCash project, and when they do, I have a feeling the rewards will be incredible. 
• Let me leave you with this. I got into Bitcoin just in time for the 2017 bull run, and I have never seen anything like it since. Everybody was talking about Bitcoin. Whether I was at work, or at a kid’s birthday party, you couldn’t escape it. Bitcoin and crypto in general got so much attention in the mainstream media that after 2017, it was hard to find someone who hadn’t heard of Bitcoin or crypto.
• But sadly that attention hadn’t been earned. Whether it was Bitcoin or Ethereum or some crappy token that had just done an ICO, none of them were ready for the masses. The infrastructure, the user experience, the fees, all of it sucked. 
• My point is that merely getting people’s attention isn’t enough. You have to hold their attention, and the only way to do that is to deliver something that they actually find useful.
• This is why I’m so bullish eCash. Because I think the team behind this project is building something special. They’re not just building another casino, they’re building a foundation for other builders to come in and build real world applications and businesses. In other words, they’re doing it right this time, and hopefully, this time will indeed be different.
• Thanks for listening. Until the next time on the proofofwriting.com podcast.