Don’t get fooled into the short-term cryptocurrency price explosion

Bitcoin. Etherium. Ripple.

Recently the price of all cryptocurrencies has exploded in price, and every media site is working the type. This is the new way to get rich – quick!

As of writing this, I just screenshotted this from Coinmarketcap:

By reading this, it says that the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies are 137.137.994.554 USD. That’s 137 BILLION DOLLARS.

Now, please – don’t get fooled by this.

This is going to explode.

Big time.

This is going to be the equivalent of the IT bubble – and potentially worse:

This is going to say “BOOM” and loose a shit-ton of value.

Lord-of-the-rings-like currencies are not worth 100 million USD – yet

Glancing at the list of cryptocurrencies, we meet:

Qtum (856 million$ marketcap)
Statis (672 million$ marketcap)
Tether (321 million$ marketcap)
Augur (240 million$ marketcap)

And many, many, many others.

Not only do they sound like an orc from Lord of the rings, all their team photos are also made up of a geeky group:

They all look like this. Probably absolutely amazing developers – and some of these will do breakthroughs in the future we can’t even imagine.

But honestly.

Just like the IT bubble where people threw A LOT of money into shit that didn’t make any sense, ignoring all sense of profitability and common sense, the same is happening here.

These “ICO’s” (a new cryptocurrency team offers some of their coins in return for payments) are going to crash. Bitcoin are going to crash. Etherium are going to crash.

The reason is they absolutely don’t deliver value of 130 billion USD – yet. Not even remotely close.

Yes, Bitcoin COULD become the new medium for storage of wealth. Dash COULD replace the whole remittance industry. Etherium COULD replace our modern day patent system (and a billion other things).

But as of today, there are very little real value. There are no “killer apps”. They are few real use cases. There are absolutely nothing but speculation and big ideas that is maintaining a 130 billion USD market cap…

Don’t get fooled by the explosion in price – this is going to crash. Hard.

But let’s not forget what happened after the IT bubble

While IT companies in the nineties sucked (hard), we all know what happened since.

Lets take a brief look of the ten most valuable companies in the world today:

Take second quarter of ’17. Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Alibaba – all are IT companies (you could argue Apple is a hardware company, but I do believe it’s fair to put them into the IT company basket).

These IT companies (add Apple and Microsoft as an exception since they were dominating back then with real products) were not even invented or were just big ideas. They sucked. They had a great team of smart people working on the idea. And during the last 5-10 years, quite a lot of years after the bubble, they’re started to deliver real value and profitability.

I am not so sure we will see cryptocurrencies- or cryptocompanies dominating the list in the same way. While the blockchain is an amazing invention, I do not believe it’s on the same level as the Internet. However, I could be wrong and lets say a cryptocurrency replaces our day-to-day currency, it’s a different story (and then it makes no sense to compare it with market caps of companies anyway).

HOWEVER. I think it’s fair to say that cryptocurrencies has a VERY bright future. I personally believe A LOT in cryptocurrencies. They can make the world a more efficient and better place.

But I also believe we need to respect Gartners Hype Cycle:

Blockchain is on the “top of the hype”, and Gartner has put a 5-10 years timeline of mainstream adoption.

I do believe this to be true.

We will see a huge drop in these non-sense ICO’s, huge market caps and explosions in price.

But when we get to the other side – I can’t even imagine where we will end up.

So should you buy cryptocurrencies right now?
If you plan to hold it for 5-10 years, sure.
If you suddenly end up with 20% of your initial investment and feel bad, probably not.

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Maintaining a “traveling lifestyle” while working on a start-up

Clickbait title: how I had 9 mini-vacations and still work in a very ambitious start-up with crazy working hours

Working at an ambitious start-up is not aaalways the best for your health and mentality. We work 60-70 hours a week – with 80 hour week exceptions. And we’re not talking “American “biography book” work weeks” – we’re talking actual hours at the office working.

This has a lot of obvious challenges (especially regarding general health), but also a lot of side-benefits I haven’t thought about before:

  • You start to become more narrow-minded
  • You loose friends / you don’t get to meet so many new people
  • You don’t get to cultivate many other interests

To conquer this you need crazy discipline.
Recently I started running at 6am, I sign myself up for half-marathons every 3 months, I force myself to listen to audiobooks whenever I’m in transit or do sports, I time block “meet friends” in my calendar and fill it out every week with new people.
The whole point is: you need to make a real effort to get basic things to work.

However… The real challenge for me has been fitting in vacations with this lifestyle. I’m a traveller. I want to see the WHOLE world! I’m an adventurer at heart.

Being a traveller and adventurer while working 60-70 hours a week at a start-up is not very compatible. However, I have some thoughts on this matter and how I solve it… Which I’d like to share.

How to combine travel with working in an ambitious start-up

Now, starting off, I’ve realised I cannot treat all travel and vacations the same. I’ve come to the conclusion there are three obvious ways to travel:

  • Actual vacation where you take actual time off
  • Weekend vacations
  • Workations where you work 12+ hour days from a co-working space

This obviously sounds very simple. The devil is in the details and how to ACTUALLY fitting this in. I want to show what I’ve done as I believe this can be a big inspiration for those who don’t think it’s possible.

Lets take a look at my last 12 months:

  • August 2017 (Berlin,Germany, weekend vacation from late Thursday to Sunday – 1 work day spent)
  • July 2017 (Costa Rica, 2.5 weeks of “real” vacation – used weekends so only 10 work days spent)
  • June 2017 (Malaga, 1 week of workation combined with a weekend vacation from friday – 0 work days spent)
  • April 2017 (Malaga, workation – 0 work days spent)
  • April 2017 (Stavanger, weekend vacation, done in easter so 0 work days spent)
  • February 2017 (Stockholm, workation – 0 work days spent)
  • December 2016 (Thailand, 1 week or “real vacation” in the Christmas – 3 work days spent)
  • October 2016 (Tinglev, Denmark, weekend vacation – 0 work days spent)
  • October 2016 (Berlin, Germany, workation – 0 work days spent)

In total I spent 14 work days (less than 3 weeks) on having 9 awesome vacations. I managed to do all this and MUCH more:

Beach in Malaga:

La Paz in Costa Rica:

Preikestolen in Stavanger:

Rooftop pool in Bangkok:

Hiking in Hua Hin: 

Additional thoughts

Being able to do this has really helped me be able to maintain working in a start-up. It’s crazy hard and I love it every day, but sometimes, you just need to disconnect and charge the batteries. This is a way to do it.

Now, I understand if some people say: But dude, how the **** do you afford this when working in a start-up (which usually don’t earn a lot of money)?

Well. It’s no secret I don’t get a decent salary… But my answer is threefold:

  1. I’ve had some good savings from my previous company I could use to pay myself a salary
  2. Travelling isn’t that expensive IF you follow best-practices in cost-effective travelling (my total travel budget has been less than 6.500 USD the last 12 months)
  3. Include work activities related to your business, so you can deduct tax in some cases

My total budget last 12 months has been around 6.500 USD. Now, this is also quite extravagant for most people, but take in mind that 50% of this was from Costa Rica and I’ve absolutely not followed the rules about staying cheap. I could easily have cut my budget down to 50% by replacing Costa Rica with something shorter and closer to my home and using more hostels instead of pretty damn good hotels.
It is possible to do this these things on a budget. 

 

So my own conclusion is: You can actually get to travel a lot while building a crazy ambitious start-up! Now, I’ll go plan my next trip! ,)

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Working 70 hours a week vs. being a digital nomad

Start 2015 I proclaimed I wanted to become a digital nomad. I wanted to travel the world, work remote and see the world.

A quick definition for those unaware of the term digital nomad:

Digital nomads are people who use telecommunications technologies to earn a living and, more generally, conduct their life in a nomadic manner. Such workers typically work remotely—generally from foreign countries, coffee shops, public libraries, co-working spaces and even recreational vehicles—to accomplish tasks and goals that traditionally took place in a single, stationary workplace.)

It was something I had dreamed to do for a long while. Being able to live where I wanted, work when I wanted and see what I wanted – not limited by geography.

In 2015 I managed to get that to work. I managed to be able to pull a stable 50k DKK salary a month (roughly 7.5k USD) from running my remote outsourcing company – and I could have increased that and been living like a king in most places of the world. I lived in Thailand and Philippines. I worked from Malaga. I worked from Bucharest. I worked from Hong Kong. I worked from Berlin.
– All amazing places – especially since I had/have friends and family in those places.

Continue reading Working 70 hours a week vs. being a digital nomad

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Goals for 2016 and reflections on 20

Goals for 2016 and reflections on 2015

Last year I made a reflection post about 2014, and that was a great experience for me personally; I want to do the same this year.

Last year I started out the post with the following:

“2014 has been the best year of my life. I say this every year, but it’s comforting to know I can keep saying it.”

Is the same true for 2015?

Continue reading Goals for 2016 and reflections on 20

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Updating your goals every month keeps ambitions high

I think one of the most important things in our lives are ambition. Ambition to do more and live “bigger” lives.

I wake up every day and believe I can change the world and get everything I want. I believe I can not only have a huge impact, but also have great friends, be very healthy and be very wealthy.

Continue reading Updating your goals every month keeps ambitions high

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Review and experiences with Joylent – a Soylent copy

A couple of years back, the company Soylent started with a blog post.

Rob Rhinehart posted that he had mixed his own cocktail of stuff, by which he meant everything the body needed (including vitamins, proteins, fats, carbohydrates and whatever is required). Instead of making food, he could store this as a type of powder and eat it.

Continue reading Review and experiences with Joylent – a Soylent copy

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How is the startup scene and community in the Philippines?

I spent June in the Philippines, working my ass off on my own startup. I also got the chance to learn much more about the startup scene in the Philippines. With that in mind, I thought it deserved a blog post.

Now, I was extremely lucky that David Margendorff from PawnHero and John Dang from Zipmatch wanted to chip in to give a more diverse view of how they see the startup community and scene. PawnHero and Zipmatch are established businesses in the Philippines, and they basically know everything there is to know about the scene.

Before we dig in, I think it’s important to provide some context. Not all readers are very familiar with the Philippines, and context matters, as it is an extremely exciting market worth exploring.

Continue reading How is the startup scene and community in the Philippines?

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Being sick as a digital nomad – when a disease hits you

Being a digital nomad is awesome most of the time. You get to see the world, work from different places, and meet a lot of new people. It’s fun, it’s challenging and it is a trend on the rise.

I like graphs, and in this post I’d like to introduce a graph which shows the way I see human emotion. It’s based on a simple fact: Sometimes we, as human beings, are happy and satisfied. Sometimes we’re sad and dissatisfied.

If we draw this graph for normal human beings, it should look something like a sine wave, going from “good to bad to good to bad to good”. Hopefully having more good than bad:

Continue reading Being sick as a digital nomad – when a disease hits you

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Uber in Manila (Philippines) – how good is it?

I am a huge Uber fan and I use it everywhere I go. I’ve always been pleasantly surprised by its service and quality. I have used Uber in Denmark, United States, Thailand and now the Philippines.

Now, the reason why I want to make this post, is because the Uber experience in the Philippines is very different than any other country.

There are some good, and some bad things about it.

Continue reading Uber in Manila (Philippines) – how good is it?

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Self-improvement can be very difficult – also when travelling

While I am travelling the world as a digital nomad, I am also trying to improve myself. This is something I’ve done since I made a lot of ridiculously ambitious goals when I was 18 years old.

Now, improving yourself is fucking difficult. You set a goal, lets say loose 10 kgs, and you’re super determined. Well. Until you get caught up, and is having food-sex with that amazing Ben & Jerries ice cream. That’s life, and it happens to anyone. However, luckily enough, sometimes we manage to break our patterns and thereby changing our actions until they become habits.

Continue reading Self-improvement can be very difficult – also when travelling

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