Welcome to the very first issue of The Vanguard newsletter.

We’re delighted you can join us.

Every week, myself and the team will get stuck in to THE biggest stories in crypto.

We’ll look at the projects we think have real, ‘world changing’ potential, and where the best opportunities lay.

This has been a rough year so far for markets.

We’ve lived through a pandemic and there is a war on the edge of Europe. If we are looking at the weeks and months ahead, there is no telling what might happen.

Almost every market is suffering some kind of disruption.

Oil, gold, stocks…it’s bedlam.

But there’s one market that we think will continue to thrive, no matter what’s happening in the wider world.

In fact, over the last ten years, cryptocurrencies have outperformed every other asset.

Today, over 300 million people hold crypto.

The market has grown from $1 billion in 2013 to nearly $1.5 trillion today.

And it’s still growing.

Faster than Facebook

If I had to compare this phenomenon to anything it would be to the early days of Facebook…a time when social media was still in its infancy.

I am thinking around 2011, when Facebook was approaching 500 million users.

At the time, we were inviting friends and family to share their holiday pictures over Facebook…

And those people were inviting their friends and family…

And so on and so on.

The network enjoyed explosive growth.

And in a few short years, it became an unstoppable phenomenon, boasting more than 2.5 billion users.

Zuckerberg, Thiel and Bono

In 2011, it was hard to see that we were on the cusp of change.

We didn’t know that we would soon all be spending hours of our day on the internet: texting, emailing, photographing, working.

But early investors in this story were making a fortune.

There were the original groups of founders: Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin.

There was Sean Parker, the hellraising Napster founder who left Facebook in 2005 after a cocaine-related incident, holding 4% of the company.

Peter Thiel became Facebook’s first significant outside investor when he put up $500,000 for a 10% stake.

Bono, who took a 1.5% stake through Elevation Partners, made more money from Facebook than he did from his entire career in U2.

It was a pretty closed group.

You had to be part of the crowd.

By the time that Facebook was listed on the stock exchange, big banks and financial institutions had joined the party, earning a fortune in pre-IPO fees and investments.

The First Phase of Crypto Adoption

But this boom is different.

Instead of Bono and Wall Street…its ordinary investors who are profiting.

Take Bitcoin.

What Bitcoin has shown is that you can exchange money over the internet, between complete strangers.

You can do it safely…and you can do it cheaply…

And best of all: you can hold onto your Bitcoin as it appreciates in value.

For many people in the world, Bitcoin is now a safer bet than their own currency.

That’s why the pace of adoption has been so crazy.
It’s telling that the countries that top the list of crypto adopters are:

1. Ukraine
2. Russia
3. Venezuela
4. China
5. Kenya

Source: “The 2020 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report.” Chainalysis, 2020.

The fact is that millions of people trust Bitcoin over their own government.

And that population of investors is growing.

Bitcoin has been growing at an annual rate of 113%, vs the internet’s growth at that time of 63%.

Should Bitcoin’s adoption slow to that of the internet’s, it would still lead to 1 billion users by 2024 and 4 billion users by 2030.

Africa is the big new market.

A recent report by Chainalysis, a blockchain data platform, found that between July 2020 and June 2021, Africans received $105.6 billion worth of cryptocurrency payments—an increase of 1200 percent from the year before.

Then, there are younger investors coming of age.

Over the next ten years, millennial investors will inherit an estimated $10 trillion.

This will see a huge transfer of wealth out of traditional assets and into cryptocurrencies.

The Second Explosive Phase

But the really big new market for cryptocurrencies is Big Finance.

The likes of Goldman, JP Morgan, Blackrock.

So far they have sat on the sidelines…chiefly, because they have not been allowed to invest.

Recents survey of institutional investors revealed that regulation (21%) was cited as the main reason for not investing.

Closely linked to this were corporate restrictions at 19%.

And finally, volatility remains a big concern amongst these investors.

Basically, their own rules wouldn’t allow it.

But that is changing.

Right now, crypto is being endorsed by everyone from the UK government to football clubs to major central banks.

And the big financial institutions want in.

They can no longer afford to ignore a $2 trillion market.

One of the first major institutions to invest in crypto was Microstrategy.

Microstrategy invested $250 million in Bitcoin in 2020.

They were then followed by the likes of Goldman, JP Morgan, PayPal, Square and many others.

And this was the start of the next phase for crypto.

Today, there are 36 publicly traded companies heavily invested in crypto.

There is in the range of $50 billion on the balance sheet of major companies.

And we are about to see a massive rotation into this market by institutional investors.

There are already some huge buyers lining up.

Take sovereign wealth funds.

Many of these already hold big tech companies…so holding digital gold is not a large leap from that.

They could invest billions.

Why Bitcoin could be worth $150,000

In fact, there’s no way of telling how quickly this network will scale.

Facebook went from million to a billion users overnight.

And then came the likes of Airbnb, Uber, Tiktok.

Early investors in these companies made a fortune.

But this new internet is scaling even faster.

…and crypto is right at the heart of it.

Today, the average Briton spends 60 hours a week online…and that number is going to grow and grow.

In 10 years, we will be talking about a massive online world where we spend most of our time.

And crypto will be means of transaction in that new system.

Investing today is like being an early investor in Amazon or Facebook.

Yes, it’s highly risky.

Cryptos are the most volatile asset in history.

But this is a technology that could reshape society.

Instead of exchanging data over Facebook: emails, pictures, videos, profiles, payments.

This next internet is about exchanging value….

Bitcoin is already a secure and valid store of wealth for people in uncertain economic environments.

It cannot be manipulated, counterfeited or otherwise meddled with by governments, corporations or any one individual.

In fact, Bitcoin was designed as “digital gold” from the outset. The supply of bitcoin is fixed, capped at 21 million units.

So far, 18 million units have been created and the supply will be continually reduced as it follows a mathematically metered, predictable, and predefined schedule.

In the near future, if Bitcoin were to take just 25% of gold’s market cap, it would scale towards a market cap of $2.5 trillion and a price per Bitcoin of $150,000.

You are still very early

Ultimately, the point we want to make is this: you are early.

You are very early.

If you invest now, you are joining a network just as it is really taking off.

And you could make a serious return from crypto.

We’ll tell you more about those opportunities in our new issue.

For now, let’s just say it’s great to have you onboard!