Q&A with @iamjosephyoung

1. For those who don’t know you, who is Joseph Young?

I’m an financial analyst and a journalist. I’ve been covering the cryptocurrency sector since 2013, working with publications such as CCN and Cointelegraph, and I’ve recently started contributing to Forbes. I’m passionate about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, especially the potential of major digital currencies to render financial institutions and banks unnecessary.

2. How you ended up in crypto?

I was first introduced to cryptocurrency in 2012. I started to read the works of Nick Szabo, Andreas Antonopoulos, and others. I really got into the space in 2013, which was when I made my first bitcoin investment. I remember buying $200 worth of bitcoin when BTC was at around $130 through a local brokerage in the Philippines. I was hooked since then. I used the first $200 worth of bitcoin I bought to pay for an online service and when I successfully made a payment that took seconds to be broadcasted to the bitcoin network, I immediately knew that bitcoin could one day compete with traditional assets and financial institutions.

3. What are you currently working on and what are your plans for 2018 onwards?

At the moment, I’m focused with my commitment to CCN, Forbes, and other publications I work with. But, I intend to change that in 2018 as I’ve already made plans to establish a cryptocurrency publication and a podcast. In this period, wherein startups and projects are experiencing exponential growth, I believe it is of utmost importance to communicate, collaborate, and study emerging technologies with respected developers, investors, and analysts in the space. I think running a podcast would motivate me to investigate into emerging projects and work with innovative startups in the space.

4. What your first month of crypto looked like?

I got into cryptocurrency very early and in 2012, there wasn’t much going on. Even in 2013, when I actively started to write about the cryptocurrency sector and report all things blockchain, I often found days that had no newsworthy events. Nowadays, the cryptocurrency sector is receiving a significant amount of mainstream media coverage and exposure.

5. What’s your day job like?

I pretty much write all day, edit articles, and research. I try to provide unique coverage of startups and innovative technologies by conducting two to three interviews per week but apart from that, my daily routine is fixed. But, I’m very satisfied with my day job because it allows me to understand the cryptocurrency industry in and out, which isn’t easy if your focus is elsewhere. Unlike the traditional finance sector, the cryptocurrency market goes on 24/7.

6. What you make of current market situation and what you foresee 2018 will look like?

Recency bias is a terrible thing. When the cryptocurrency sector surpassed $500 billion and neared $1 trillion in valuation, everyone was very optimistic. Now that the valuation of the cryptocurrency market is around $300 billion, the majority of investors are overly pessimistic, primarily because of the recent correction. If the cryptocurrency market had not experienced a sudden surge in December 2017 to $900 billion, recency bias would not have come into play and investors would still be optimistic. But, because of the 5-month correction from January to May, which really only sent back market to October 2017, most investors are bearish.

Sell when the majority is bullish and buy when the majority is bearish. I still see an optimistic future for the market in 2018.

7. What you currently hold for long term? Why?

I’ve held bitcoin since 2013, held Ethereum since 2015, and only started to invest in some tokens in 2018. But, the tokens I have invested in are very ambitious projects that are attempting unorthodox and unconventional concepts. I despise tokens or cryptocurrencies that are generic. Technobabble terms like high performance blockchain don’t really sit well with me.

I believe in bitcoin because I believe it can take on the $30 trillion offshore banking industry. I believe in Ethereum because like bitcoin, it is the smart contracts blockchain network with the longest track record. Both bitcoin and Ethereum have built resilience by dealing with a countless number of hacking attempts and bugs. Security wise, no other blockchain comes close to bitcoin and Ethereum.

I’m interested in Cardano because it’s attempting proof of stake which we still haven’t seen do well in a large-scale. I’m interested in Ziliqa because it’s competing against Ethereum to implement sharding. But I have not invested in either Cardano or Ziliqa because i haven’t seen enough from both to conclude that they are good long-term holds. I’m interested in Decentraland, ICON, Aragon, and others but I’m not convinced *yet* that they are long-term holds. We will see.

8. Favorite crypto people

I admire and respect people that are modest, open-minded, humble, and have willingness to learn. The quintessential crypto figure for me would be Ari Paul or Andreas Antonopoulos. Humble, modest, open-minded, and knowledgeable.

I follow Vitalik Buterin, Charles Hoskinson, Joseph Lubin, Ryan Selkis, Erik Voorhees, Nathaniel Popper, Barry Silbert, Nick Szabo, Naval Ravikant, and many others. These are the people that come to mind.

9. What satisfies you the most in crypto?

The cryptocurrency industry is filled with people who attend conferences in flip flops and t-shirts who truly do not care about the attention of others. Most crypto people are down to earth, honest, and hard working, apart from the scammers obviously.

10. What you dislike the most in crypto?

Scammers. There are too many sketchy individuals and scammers in this space and it is the obligation of investors to filter those people out. I would honestly say that the overwhelming majority of the people in this space are not legitimate.

11. How will crypto dominance look like from now on to 2020? Will BTC crush alts or vice versa?

I’m not really into bitcoin vs alts argument. I don’t even like the term alts. Everything that is not bitcoin is an alternative cryptocurrency? I don’t think so. I think the best cryptocurrency will succeed. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have the flexibility to scale, change, and implement innovative solutions. Rootstock is one example that allows bitcoin to function like an Ethereum-style smart contracts based platform.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are trying to solve different problems. Bitcoin and Ethereum can co-exist, and bitcoin, Ethereum, and some other cryptocurrency can co-exist as well. One platform can’t rule them all. In a truly tokenized economy, there should be room for many cryptocurrencies.

12. Privacy coins highly disputed battlefield, will they thrive? Which will dominate?

Zcash’s zero-knowledge cryptography is something special, because it can be implemented to other public blockchain networks like Ethereum. In fact, I think a year ago, Ethereum developers already processed a ZK-SNARKs private Ether transactions on the Ethereum testnet. If the criterion is applicability, Zcash.

Monero is very difficult to use and often, technologies that are very difficult to use or burdensome to use like PGP (Most people don’t bother with PGP) are robust and strong. Monero is, at least for now, the only true anonymous cryptocurrency that processes everything on its blockchain network as private information or transactions.

Monero and Zcash are the two winners for me. Dash, Verge, and others, I will not comment on because I can’t think of good things to say.

13. Asia crypto outlook for 2020, who will be at the forefront, who will be left behind?

VeChain, ICON, Qtum, OmiseGo, Tron, Bytom, WanChain, and Aelf are the top blockchain projecs based in Asia at the moment. Currently, I’m not sure if any one of these blockchain network can survive because we haven’t seen anything yet. None of these blockchains are in mainnet I believe. I think VeChain, ICON, and OmiseGo will do quite well.

@iamjosephyoung is one of the best crypto journalist/analyst out here, he covers mostly macro crypto-economics, and asian markets.

Honored to have done a Q&A with Joseph, greatly appreciated Joe!

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