I came to prison for engineering a large digital asset Ponzi Scheme. Similar to Ryan I worked in investment banking and completed an MBA and had success in the financial markets and I’d like to offer support if you’d like.
To answer the questions: The digital asset economy is large and growing at an exponential rate. However, some of the unintended consequences of this are that inflation ran high as money was created out of thin air undermining the authority of central banks to control the money supply. The biggest benefit from digital assets is the availability to provide banking worldwide irrespective of any governmental infrastructure. I learned this when I was raising money that in countries like China there is a healthy fear of government intervention without due process. This distrust created a need for savers to have a secure place for a store of value. The digital asset economy provides the answer to that problem. As the utility factor of digital assets gained creditability the vulnerability of traditional banking proliferated. The result: governments and central banks are now forced to work with a large disruptor that has forever changes the once homogeneous financial system. By understanding this exciting field it can open phenomonal opportunities to liasion in financial and technological fields of study that offer competitive compensation awards.
When I was “snitching on my case” the CFTC, SEC, and FBI were the agencies most interested in uncovering the role of “mixers” and techniques using cryptography to launder money internationally. A deep knowledge and application can open opportunities for those seeking wisdom from a person that can share wisdom as a trusted advisor. This approach could certainly create a demand for an entire new market that is unbiased for ex-offenders like myself to leverage a new equal market to sustain financial freedom combating financial duress that makes offending attractive.
The factors that I look at in considering digital investments are the whitepapers, market share, demand required to sustain price, and overall beta to Bitcoin. Then I look closer to find arbitrage opportunities, volume, and non-standard futures tape patterns. For this information, I usually download terabytes of data and export via SQL into Excel and perform the standard macros (VaR, confidence intervals, etc.) and usually the data points the path of the most pattern recognition thereby increasing predictive value. Predictive value = % of capital committed to an investment. Highly quantitative more than anything else.
